king's speech rhetorical analysis

Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis

Frank Coffman - WORDSMITH

Rhetorical Analysis of the Speech

by Frank Coffman, Retired Professor of English and Journalism, Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.

Clear reference to both Lincoln and his “Gettysburg Address.” The speech was given from a platform on the front steps of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.

METAPHORS here: “hope” is a “beacon light” and “withering injustice” is a searing “flame.”

It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.

METAPHORS here also, but note the ANTITHESIS of the metaphors: the Emancipation Proclamation is “daybreak”; the “long night” of “captivity” is ended.

HERE FOLLOWS the first of Dr. King’s parallelisms using the TETRACOLON, a four- part parallel structure of clauses. Also used is ANAPHORA, the parallelism technique of Repeated Beginnings: “one hundred years later.” I’ve separated the four “branches” of this TETRACOLON to aid in further discussion.

• But one hundred years later , the Negro still is not free.
• One hundred years later , the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. Again a sort of double-METAPHOR with “manacles” = “segregation” and “chains” = “discrimination.”
• One hundred years later , the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. Nice example of King’s seeming preference for ANTITHETICAL METAPHORS and doing them in pairs. A balance of opposites ( antithesis means “against the statement”). “poverty” is an “island” in the “ocean” of “prosperity.” Nice ALLITERATION on the letter “P” with “poverty” vs. “prosperity.”
• One hundred years later , the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. And so we’ve come here today to dramatize a shameful condition. This is a PARADOX. By definition, one cannot be an “exile in his own land.” To be exiled means to be sent away from/out of ones own land. But the PARADOX points out something seemingly impossible, but which, in some ways at least, is, nonetheless, true.

•In a sense we’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. Here begins an ANALOGY (a comparison along several lines of comparable parts) on the “check.” Note the underlined and boldfaced connections that springboard off of the concept of the “check.” The ANALOGY continues in the next paragraph. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise [Which is exactly what a check is: a promise to pay.] that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the “unalienable Rights” of “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” Literally and Figuratively: “insufficient funds.”

But [Note the use of a conjunction (“But”) to start a sentence. This is absolutely OK. If you were ever told, “Never use a conjunction to begin a sentence” — forget that. It’s a “Training Wheels Rule” for beginning writers.] we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so, we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to this hallowed [Probably here also an homage to and allusion to Lincoln’s Gettysburg speech: “…we cannot dedicate, we cannot consecrate, we cannot hallow this ground.”] spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of Now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. This is followed by King’s second TETRACOLON (again, separated out here for emphasis):

• Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy.
• Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Note again the balanced and ANTITHETICAL METAPHORS.
• Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Note again the balanced and ANTITHETICAL METAPHORS.
• Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God’s children.

•It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent <<This is a clear ALLUSION to the opening of Shakespeare’s RICHARD III, with a nice twist: “Now is the winter of our discontent made glorious summer…” will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. And those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. And there will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people, who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice: In the process of gaining our rightful place, we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. <<Here another ANTITHESIS: “rightful” balanced against “wrongful.” Let us not [<<This is one of the types of INVERSION often seen in formal speaking and writing: we usually put the negative before the verb (“Don’t let us”) rather than after (“Let us not”). Other types of inversions are: adjective after noun and verb before subject. ] seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again, we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force.

The m arvelous new m ilitancy [ <<Nice ALLITERATION on the “Ms.” ] which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny. And they have come to realize that their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom.

We cannot walk alone. <<The first of several short, simple sentences used for effect.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall always march ahead.

We cannot turn back. Here follows a PENTACOLON (five parallel clauses): There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?”

• We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality.
• We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities.
• We cannot be satisfied as long as the negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one.
• We can never be satisfied as long as our children are stripped of their self-hood and robbed of their dignity by signs stating: “For Whites Only.”
• We cannot be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote.

No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until “justice rolls down like waters, and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

I am not unmindful [The “not un-“ structure is the marker of LITOTES (understatement by negating the opposite — “not unmindful” means “I know”)] that [And here follows a TRICOLON: three clauses in parallel — Lincoln’s favorite device. Also again, the use of the repeated opening — ANAPHORA (the “first word or phrase repeated in a parallel series)]:

• some of you have come here out of great t rials and t ribulations.
• Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. And
• some of you have come from areas where your quest — quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality.

You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive. [The following exhibits ANAPHORA again, of coure, but also we have what would be called — in the Greek enumeration of such things — a HEXACOLON]:

• Go back to Mississippi,
• go back to Alabama,
• go back to South Carolina,
• go back to Georgia,
• go back to Louisiana,
• go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed.

Let us not wallow in the valley of despair, I say to you today, my friends.

And so even though we face the difficulties of today and tomorrow, I still have a dream . It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream. Then King’s favorite parallelism grouping — another TETRACOLON, with, again, ANAPHORA:

1. I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

2. I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

3. I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

4. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today! << REPETITIO (REPETITION) is not a fault to repeat oneself — if it’s used for emphasis.

I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of “interposition” and “nullification” — one day right there in Alabama little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today!

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, and every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight; “and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed and all flesh shall see it together.”

This is our hope, and this is the faith that I go back to the South with.

1. With this fait h, we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope.

2. With this faith , we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.

3. With this faith , we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day. In structure, the preceding TRICOLON is a clear homage and reference to Lincoln’s “Second Inaugural Address”: “…With malice toward none. With charity for all. With firmness in the right, as God gives us to see the right…”

And this will be the day — this will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning:

“My country ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the Pilgrim’s pride, From every mountainside, let freedom ring!”

And if America is to be a great nation, this must become true.

And so (introducing a final long series of ANAPHORIC parallelism — 9 of them! Thus, a NONOCOLON?!)

let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire.

Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York.

Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania.

Let freedom ring from the snow-capped Rockies of Colorado.

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California. But not only that:

Let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia.

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee.

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi.

From every mountainside, let freedom ring .

And when this happens, when we allow freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual:

Free at last! Free at last!

Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!

King ends his speech to use Emotional appeals (PATHOS), but he has already used logical (LOGOS) and moral (ETHOS) appeals. Ancient rhetoricians agreed that all three were needed.

Written by Frank Coffman - WORDSMITH

Frank Coffman is a published poet, author, scholarly researcher, and retired professor of English, Creative Writing, and Journalism. frankcoffman-writer.net

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I Have a Dream Speech

Martin luther king, jr..

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King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech: Rhetorical Analysis Essay (Critical Writing)

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On August 28th, 1963, Martin Luther King delivered his most fiery speech to shock the United States – “I Have a Dream.” “America has defaulted on this promissory note, insofar as her citizens of color are concerned,” a black rights advocate shouted from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial (King 1963, pp. 4). The speech is full of outrage and contains allusions to the Bible and the US Declaration of Independence. It is considered one of the best in the history of mankind. The main theses of King’s political speeches were not only the equalization of the rights of Whites and Blacks but also a more global idea – world peace for the sake of the prosperity of mankind.

The format of Martin Luther King’s speech is quite simple, as the entire text can be conditionally divided into two parts. The first part presents a picture of an American nightmare full of injustice and humiliation of human dignity. This part is about both the past and the present day, namely, August 28th, 1963. In addition, in the first part of his speech, King calls people to stand up for themselves and their dignity. The second part of the speech, however, is much more positive. It represents King’s view on the bright future of the United States, his dream, his hope and belief in equality and justice for all people, regardless of skin color.

Martin Luther King used a variety of rhetorical techniques, such as speech figures and tropes, in his speech. Among these techniques, allusions are the most prominent. For the first time, the allusion in King’s “I Have a Dream” speech is used immediately after the opening sentence, which is an homage to the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863. US President Abraham Lincoln abolished slavery with this proclamation. The reference is symbolic and carries a lot of meaning, setting the tone of the speech from the very beginning. “Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation,” said King (1963, pp. 2). This passage is also a starting point – the beginning of the story, indicating the date and place of the event.

Among English-speaking speakers, references to Shakespeare and the Bible were especially popular, which is exactly what Martin Luther King did in his speech. For example, King (1963) said: “This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality” (pp. 7). This is a very subtle allusion to the play by William Shakespeare, Richard III . Moreover, King often refers to the Bible in his speech, which, of course, is natural and not surprising because he was a pastor. “It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity” (King 1963, pp. 2), he announced right at the beginning of his speech. This is, in fact, an allusion to Psalm 31, verse 4: “Pull me out of the net that they have laid privily for me: for thou art my strength” (King James Bible 1769). Being a deeply religious person, King artfully weaved homages to Bible into his speech, which only helped him translate his idea to the masses in a more understandable and relatable way.

Although this historical event happened a long time ago, the general idea of King’s speech is modern and relevant to this day: it is impossible to win by responding with violence to violence. Martin Luther King’s insistent calls for unity and nonviolent action in response to oppression and brutality are worthy of deep respect and long memory. His speeches have become key moments in American history in the struggle for racial justice. And this particular, unique speech, “I Have a Dream,” is, indeed, a real rhetorical masterpiece, presented in a powerful and inspiring way.

King James Bible . (2017). King James Bible Online.

King, M. L. (1963). I Have a Dream . American rhetoric.

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I Have a Dream: Rhetorical Analysis

In his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” Martin Luther King presented his arguments using some of the most compelling figurative language ever employed in a speech.

Introduction: I Have a Dream

Table of Contents

In his famous speech, “I Have a Dream,” Martin Luther King presented his arguments using some of the most compelling figurative language ever employed in a speech. At the outset, King expresses his dream about Abraham Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, portraying it as a beacon of hope for all Negroes to attain equal rights and citizenship in the United States. He proceeds to draw a parallel between the circumstances of a century earlier and the present reality as he addresses his fellow Negroes. King contends that while the situation has not significantly changed, the Declaration of Independence affirms their entitlement to equal citizenship alongside white people. Despite America having “defaulted on this promissory note” of granting them constitutionally enshrined “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” King asserts that they will not accept this status quo, likening it to a bad check (553).

According to King, they have come again to claim these rights, believing that it is now the opportune moment. However, he cautions his followers against resorting to violence, emphasizing that it is a counterproductive path that would hinder their cause. Instead, he advises them to embrace non-violent methods of protest within their respective states. King then articulates his dream of witnessing white and black girls and boys walking together, united in their pursuit of equal rights for Negroes. I believe that Martin Luther King eloquently employed classical rhetorical strategies, including pathos , logos , ethos , and kairos , through his figurative language to persuade his audience against resorting to violence in their quest for equal rights with white people.

Classical Strategies in I Have a Dream

Pathos in i have a dream.

Regarding classical rhetorical strategies, Martin Luther King demonstrates a particular proficiency in the use of pathos. He repeatedly employs it to passionately appeal to his audience, urging them that their pursuit of rights is a noble one that does not necessitate resorting to violence. Initially, he evokes emotions by describing the plight of Negroes a century ago, stating, “we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free,” emphasizing the persistency of this condition over the past century (King 553). On the subsequent page, he continues to appeal to their emotions, acknowledging, “I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations,” conveying his awareness of their collective suffering (555). Notably, he employs the poignant phrase, “You have been veterans of the creative suffering,” linking the experiences of other Negroes to emphasize their shared suffering and unity in their quest for rights. The repetitive articulation of his dream serves to reinforce his message, playing on the emotions of his audience and urging them to strive for their rights without resorting to violence. This speech stands out as Martin Luther King’s most adept use of pathos.

Logos in I Have a Dream

In terms of logos, Martin Luther King employs logical reasoning throughout his speech. Initially, he appeals to logos by asserting his demand for rights under the influence of the great American, President Abraham Lincoln, who signed “the Emancipation Proclamation” (553). This reference suggests that the proclamation, in principle, promises equal rights for all, yet the reality on the ground reflects a stark contrast where Negroes are not treated equally.

King further relies on logical arguments, presenting the constitutional equality as a promissory note, asserting that their “unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” are guaranteed by both the Constitution and “the Declaration of Independence” (554). His logical reasoning extends to the assertion that they have gathered to demand the fulfillment of this promise, emphasizing that segregation and racial injustice must cease immediately. He warns that the discontent will persist as it is their unalienable right enshrined in the constitution.

Another logical point made by King is the progression from a “smaller ghetto to a larger ghetto,” illustrating that despite this progress, they have not been granted the rights they deserve (555). Therefore, his logical argument contends that everything they are demanding in terms of rights is already promised to them, except in practice.

Moreover, King utilizes logical reasoning when comparing the past with the present, emphasizing that the time has come for democracy to spread globally. He argues that they must seize this opportunity to secure their rights.

In addition to logos, King also incorporates ethos into his persuasive techniques.

Ethos in I Have a Dream

Regarding ethos, Martin Luther King’s personal credibility plays a significant role in his persuasive efforts. As a prominent “spokesman of civil rights movements during the 1950s and 1960s,” as mentioned in his introduction, his name and qualifications lend authority to his words (553). His advocacy for the philosophy of non-violence, stemming from his education in theology, adds further weight to his ethos.

In the speech, King employs ethos by expressing mindfulness of the hardships his audience has endured, acknowledging that they have come from different states across America. He specifically names each state, urging individuals to return and engage in peaceful protests. Additionally, he aligns himself with the American dream of equality and enhanced opportunities, stating, “It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream” (555). His references to the national anthem, acknowledgment of followers from various religions and races, and constant allusions to different states highlight his awareness of his position as a rights activist.

King consistently calls for protest, emphasizing a non-violent approach, recognizing the potential consequences of spiraling out of control. This demonstrates his understanding of the delicate balance needed in the pursuit of justice.

Furthermore, King strategically employs kairos by comparing the then-and-now, frequently using the term “now.” He asserts, “Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy,” emphasizing that these promises were not fulfilled in the past (554). This use of classical rhetorical strategies, including ethos and kairos, contributes to the effectiveness of his speech.

Figurative Language in I Have a Dream

Martin Luther King employs various figures of speech, including metaphors, similes, allusions, and references, enriching the language and impact of his speech. Metaphors are particularly prevalent, with examples like “the long night of captivity,” “solid rock of brotherhood,” “a bad check,” “sweltering summer,” and others (554). Notably, the metaphors related to weather, such as summer symbolizing torture, humiliation, and barbarism, while spring symbolizes the arrival of better days, serve as powerful symbols of hardship and hope.

Similes are used to compare the past experiences of Negroes with their present circumstances, emphasizing the lack of significant change in the situation of their rights.

King incorporates references and allusions, citing important documents like the Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the Emancipation Proclamation. Additionally, he alludes to common instances of police brutality without specifying particular events, maintaining a broader yet relatable context.

Repetition is a notable rhetorical device, contributing to the memorability and impact of the speech. Phrases like “Go back,” “I have a dream,” and “Let freedom ring from” are repeated throughout the speech, creating a rhythmic and emphatic cadence that reinforces key messages (555-557&558).

Overall, King’s adept use of figurative language, combined with strategic repetition, enhances the persuasiveness and eloquence of his speech, making it a compelling and memorable piece of oratory.

Conclusion: I Have a Dream

In short, Martin Luther King’s speech possesses the qualities of a great oration. While not necessarily intentional, he effectively incorporates classical rhetorical devices such as logos , pathos , ethos , and kairos throughout the speech, making it compelling and forceful. King’s own credibility, highlighted by his significant role in civil rights movements and the awarding of the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964, adds weight to his ethos (553).

In addition to rhetorical devices , King utilizes literary devices like metaphors , similes , references, and allusions to convince his audience that non-violent strategies are more effective in achieving their rights. He strategically references the national anthem to evoke patriotism and emphasizes the importance of unity between blacks and whites in singing the song as an expression of love for their country.

The skillful use of repetition , such as the iconic phrase “I have a dream,” contributes to the speech’s memorability. King consistently refers to democracy and the Declaration of Rights to underscore the high moral ground upon which they stand.

Overall, these strategies enhance the effectiveness and persuasiveness of the speech, proving its practicality, universality, and enduring impact over several decades.

Works Cited: I Have a Dream

• Krauthammer, Charles. “The Truth About Torture.” Models for Writers. Eds. Alfred Rosa and Paul Eschholz. 11th ed. Boston: Bedford /St. Martin’s, 2012. 553-558. Print

Relevant Questions about I Have a Dream

• How does Martin Luther King use rhetorical devices , such as metaphors and repetition , to convey his message and evoke emotions in the audience?
• What role does ethos play in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech, and how does his personal credibility contribute to the overall impact of his message?
• In what ways does Martin Luther King appeal to the principles of democracy and the American Dream in his speech, and how does he connect these ideals to the struggle for civil rights?

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• How to write a rhetorical analysis | Key concepts & examples

How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis | Key Concepts & Examples

Published on August 28, 2020 by Jack Caulfield . Revised on July 23, 2023.

A rhetorical analysis is a type of essay  that looks at a text in terms of rhetoric. This means it is less concerned with what the author is saying than with how they say it: their goals, techniques, and appeals to the audience.

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Table of contents

Key concepts in rhetoric, analyzing the text, introducing your rhetorical analysis, the body: doing the analysis, concluding a rhetorical analysis, other interesting articles, frequently asked questions about rhetorical analysis.

Rhetoric, the art of effective speaking and writing, is a subject that trains you to look at texts, arguments and speeches in terms of how they are designed to persuade the audience. This section introduces a few of the key concepts of this field.

Appeals: Logos, ethos, pathos

Appeals are how the author convinces their audience. Three central appeals are discussed in rhetoric, established by the philosopher Aristotle and sometimes called the rhetorical triangle: logos, ethos, and pathos.

Logos , or the logical appeal, refers to the use of reasoned argument to persuade. This is the dominant approach in academic writing , where arguments are built up using reasoning and evidence.

Ethos , or the ethical appeal, involves the author presenting themselves as an authority on their subject. For example, someone making a moral argument might highlight their own morally admirable behavior; someone speaking about a technical subject might present themselves as an expert by mentioning their qualifications.

Pathos , or the pathetic appeal, evokes the audience’s emotions. This might involve speaking in a passionate way, employing vivid imagery, or trying to provoke anger, sympathy, or any other emotional response in the audience.

These three appeals are all treated as integral parts of rhetoric, and a given author may combine all three of them to convince their audience.

Text and context

In rhetoric, a text is not necessarily a piece of writing (though it may be this). A text is whatever piece of communication you are analyzing. This could be, for example, a speech, an advertisement, or a satirical image.

In these cases, your analysis would focus on more than just language—you might look at visual or sonic elements of the text too.

The context is everything surrounding the text: Who is the author (or speaker, designer, etc.)? Who is their (intended or actual) audience? When and where was the text produced, and for what purpose?

Looking at the context can help to inform your rhetorical analysis. For example, Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech has universal power, but the context of the civil rights movement is an important part of understanding why.

Claims, supports, and warrants

A piece of rhetoric is always making some sort of argument, whether it’s a very clearly defined and logical one (e.g. in a philosophy essay) or one that the reader has to infer (e.g. in a satirical article). These arguments are built up with claims, supports, and warrants.

A claim is the fact or idea the author wants to convince the reader of. An argument might center on a single claim, or be built up out of many. Claims are usually explicitly stated, but they may also just be implied in some kinds of text.

The author uses supports to back up each claim they make. These might range from hard evidence to emotional appeals—anything that is used to convince the reader to accept a claim.

The warrant is the logic or assumption that connects a support with a claim. Outside of quite formal argumentation, the warrant is often unstated—the author assumes their audience will understand the connection without it. But that doesn’t mean you can’t still explore the implicit warrant in these cases.

For example, look at the following statement:

We can see a claim and a support here, but the warrant is implicit. Here, the warrant is the assumption that more likeable candidates would have inspired greater turnout. We might be more or less convinced by the argument depending on whether we think this is a fair assumption.

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Rhetorical analysis isn’t a matter of choosing concepts in advance and applying them to a text. Instead, it starts with looking at the text in detail and asking the appropriate questions about how it works:

• What is the author’s purpose?
• Do they focus closely on their key claims, or do they discuss various topics?
• What tone do they take—angry or sympathetic? Personal or authoritative? Formal or informal?
• Who seems to be the intended audience? Is this audience likely to be successfully reached and convinced?
• What kinds of evidence are presented?

By asking these questions, you’ll discover the various rhetorical devices the text uses. Don’t feel that you have to cram in every rhetorical term you know—focus on those that are most important to the text.

The following sections show how to write the different parts of a rhetorical analysis.

Like all essays, a rhetorical analysis begins with an introduction . The introduction tells readers what text you’ll be discussing, provides relevant background information, and presents your thesis statement .

Hover over different parts of the example below to see how an introduction works.

Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech is widely regarded as one of the most important pieces of oratory in American history. Delivered in 1963 to thousands of civil rights activists outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., the speech has come to symbolize the spirit of the civil rights movement and even to function as a major part of the American national myth. This rhetorical analysis argues that King’s assumption of the prophetic voice, amplified by the historic size of his audience, creates a powerful sense of ethos that has retained its inspirational power over the years.

The body of your rhetorical analysis is where you’ll tackle the text directly. It’s often divided into three paragraphs, although it may be more in a longer essay.

Each paragraph should focus on a different element of the text, and they should all contribute to your overall argument for your thesis statement.

Hover over the example to explore how a typical body paragraph is constructed.

King’s speech is infused with prophetic language throughout. Even before the famous “dream” part of the speech, King’s language consistently strikes a prophetic tone. He refers to the Lincoln Memorial as a “hallowed spot” and speaks of rising “from the dark and desolate valley of segregation” to “make justice a reality for all of God’s children.” The assumption of this prophetic voice constitutes the text’s strongest ethical appeal; after linking himself with political figures like Lincoln and the Founding Fathers, King’s ethos adopts a distinctly religious tone, recalling Biblical prophets and preachers of change from across history. This adds significant force to his words; standing before an audience of hundreds of thousands, he states not just what the future should be, but what it will be: “The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.” This warning is almost apocalyptic in tone, though it concludes with the positive image of the “bright day of justice.” The power of King’s rhetoric thus stems not only from the pathos of his vision of a brighter future, but from the ethos of the prophetic voice he adopts in expressing this vision.

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The conclusion of a rhetorical analysis wraps up the essay by restating the main argument and showing how it has been developed by your analysis. It may also try to link the text, and your analysis of it, with broader concerns.

Explore the example below to get a sense of the conclusion.

It is clear from this analysis that the effectiveness of King’s rhetoric stems less from the pathetic appeal of his utopian “dream” than it does from the ethos he carefully constructs to give force to his statements. By framing contemporary upheavals as part of a prophecy whose fulfillment will result in the better future he imagines, King ensures not only the effectiveness of his words in the moment but their continuing resonance today. Even if we have not yet achieved King’s dream, we cannot deny the role his words played in setting us on the path toward it.

If you want to know more about AI tools , college essays , or fallacies make sure to check out some of our other articles with explanations and examples or go directly to our tools!

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The goal of a rhetorical analysis is to explain the effect a piece of writing or oratory has on its audience, how successful it is, and the devices and appeals it uses to achieve its goals.

Unlike a standard argumentative essay , it’s less about taking a position on the arguments presented, and more about exploring how they are constructed.

The term “text” in a rhetorical analysis essay refers to whatever object you’re analyzing. It’s frequently a piece of writing or a speech, but it doesn’t have to be. For example, you could also treat an advertisement or political cartoon as a text.

Logos appeals to the audience’s reason, building up logical arguments . Ethos appeals to the speaker’s status or authority, making the audience more likely to trust them. Pathos appeals to the emotions, trying to make the audience feel angry or sympathetic, for example.

Collectively, these three appeals are sometimes called the rhetorical triangle . They are central to rhetorical analysis , though a piece of rhetoric might not necessarily use all of them.

In rhetorical analysis , a claim is something the author wants the audience to believe. A support is the evidence or appeal they use to convince the reader to believe the claim. A warrant is the (often implicit) assumption that links the support with the claim.

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Home > Dissertations and Theses > Theses and Dissertations > 345

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The king's speech: a rhetorical analysis of shakespeare's henry iv, part i.

Chance Sweat , University of New Orleans

Date of Award

Summer 8-2011

Degree Type

Degree program, major professor.

Shenk, Robert

Second Advisor

Doll, Daniel

Third Advisor

Marti, Kevin

Recent scholarship has explored the “Machiavellian” actions of Prince Hal in Henry IV, Part 1 ; yet the classical rhetorical pedagogy of Renaissance Britain suggests that the speeches in the play lead to a transformation in Hal that is antithetical to the emergent understanding of Hal as a great manipulator. Falstaff uses the ruse of rhetoric instructor in order to construct a classical rhetorical argument for his own ends, and Henry IV gives a passionate yet formally adept (and classically rhetorical) plea to his son in order to incite change. An analysis of Falstaff and Henry’s arguments as well as Hal’s responses provides the framework of understanding the play not as an example of what has been called “Machiavellianism” but rather as a testament to the power of what Cicero calls the "good man skilled in speaking.”

The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.

Recommended Citation

Sweat, Chance, "The King's Speech: A Rhetorical Analysis of Shakespeare's Henry IV, Part I" (2011). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations . 345. https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/345

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The King's Speech

A tale of friendship, transformation, and royalty's quest for equality

An uplifting and warm-hearted character study that owes as much of its delight to a charming performance by Geoffrey Rush as it does to a structure built upon depicting a Change Main Character who grows out of seemingly insurmountable odds ( Stop/Good ) to overcome his personal issues. Appearances are at the heart of issues within The King’s Speech , and the Duke of York (Colin Firth as Protagonist ) does his best to keep up the show by being the King his subjects so desperately need ([Story Goal of Being ). Bertie’s change develops as a consequence of his relationship with Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush), a speech therapist from the other side of the tracks who demands the two be treated as equals ( Obstacle Character Domain of Universe ). This unique perspective works wonders on the Duke’s personal issues of feeling less-than-equal in matters of royalty ( Main Character Domain of Mind ). Together, the two develop an unlikely friendship as they work to overcome Bertie's speech impediment ( Relationship Story Domain of Physics & Relationship Story Problem of Test ).

Decisions both bad and good (bad on the part of the Duke’s brother David (Guy Pearce) and good on the part of our Hero to continue services with Lionel) propel this film to its Triumphant ending ( Story Driver of Decision , and Story Outcome of Success ). While not overly complex, the film delivers a meaningful example of what can happen when one brings themselves into alignment ([Main Character Solution of Deviation by focusing on doing, rather than worrying endlessly upon the end results ( Obstacle Character Problem of Process ).

Oh, and a brilliant use of Beethoven’s 7th Symphony.

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The King's Speech

56 pages • 1 hour read

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-3

Chapters 4-6

Chapters 7-9

Chapters 10-12

Chapters 13-16

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Summary and Study Guide

The King’s Speech is a 2010 non-fiction book about King George VI and how he was treated for a speech impediment by the Australian Lionel Logue . Their unlikely friendship is credited for saving the British monarchy during a difficult time in world history. The King’s Speech was co-authored by Mark Logue (grandson of Lionel Logue) and Peter Conradi (an accomplished author of historical nonfiction) as an accompaniment to the Oscar-winning 2010 film of the same name. 

Plot Summary

The book begins in May 1937. King George VI wakes up on the morning of his coronation, already nervous. The British monarchy is facing “one of the greatest crises” (16) in its history following the abdication of Edward VIII. Also in London, an Australian speech therapist named Lionel Logue wakes up and begins to travel to the coronation with his wife Myrtle. The King is expected to deliver a speech, and the stammer he has suffered from since childhood has made this a difficult prospect. The streets are packed as the crowds gather to watch the ceremony. The coronation goes well. That evening, Logue travels to Buckingham Palace to help the King prepare for a radio broadcast. The next day, the King’s speech is hailed as a success.

Logue was born in Adelaide in 1880. He develops an interest in elocution and begins to perform speeches onstage for rapt audiences. He meets and marries a woman named Myrtle, and the two have a son together. They travel the world in 1908, leaving their son Laurie at home. They plan to move to Britain but do not do so until 1924. Logue becomes famous in Australia for his skills as a speech therapist. 

By the time the Logue family moves to Great Britain, they have three sons. The country is still recovering from World War I and an economic recession. Logue sets up a speech therapy practice. He develops a number of key techniques to treat speech impediments. 

The future King George VI is born in December 1895. His grandmother is Queen Victoria. With his brother, he is raised mostly by nurses and governesses, leading to a distant relationship with his parents. Whereas his brother is charming and fun, he has developed a terrible stammer. Bertie (as he is known) attends naval college and does not excel. His father is eventually proclaimed King. Bertie struggles to give speeches and frequently falls ill. In adulthood, Bertie slowly becomes his father’s favorite while his brother argues with the King and has developed a reputation for socializing. Bertie meets Elizabeth, and they marry, which pleases Bertie’s father, though his stammer remains an issue. Public speaking makes him incredibly nervous. One speech ends in humiliation for Bertie. Logue hears him speak and believes he can help. Bertie has sought medical advice, but it has always failed him. At Elizabeth’s request, Bertie agrees to meet with Logue.

Logue and Bertie meet at Logue’s office. Logue declares that he can cure the stammer but demands that his patient apply a tremendous amount of effort. They meet often, and two well-delivered speeches are seen as evidence of improvement. A royal trip to Australia goes very well, and Bertie is commended for his speech. The lessons continue.

Logue takes Myrtle to the Palace, where they are presented at court. Bertie’s improvement is noted in the press, though Logue declines to answer questions on the matter. The story is eventually published, and Logue is credited for his work, becoming famous. Bertie continues to toil and the beginnings of a real friendship between him and Logue emerge.

The narrative moves into the 1930s. Bertie is becoming more involved in the monarchy while his daughters are becoming world famous. He visits Logue less frequently but remains in touch. The Great Depression affects both men’s families. King George V dies in 1936, precipitating change for both men.

Edward takes the throne as a popular King, but his romantic relationship with twice-divorced American Wallis Simpson is scandalous. When he announces that he wants to marry Wallis, he is told it is not possible. Edward abdicates the throne. Bertie takes the throne as his brother leaves the country. Bertie becomes King George VI. His speech impediment is now an even bigger issue, even if his treatment has been going well.

Logue helps the new King prepare for his coronation. There will be a speech to the crowd and a radio broadcast for the Empire. Rehearsals do not go well, though the Queen is a calming influence. A back-up recording is made from practice speeches in the event that something should go wrong.

Both speeches are a triumph. Logue continues to help the King prepare his speeches. The monarch’s new workload is notably draining. The King delivers a Christmas day speech in the mold of his father, which Logue helps prepare. They spend Christmas day together, and the King gives Logue a present as a means of thanking him. Myrtle returns to Australia, where she is treated like a celebrity. Everyone wants to know about her husband’s work with the King.

As Europe moves closer to the Second World War, the King travels to Europe. He delivers speeches and meets with President Roosevelt. Logue grows closer to the royal family, and when the King returns from America, they chat informally about the trip while preparing for a speech.

The Second World War begins. The Logues’ Bavarian cook returns to Germany. Air raid sirens encourage everyone to move to shelters. The King and Logue prepare a special radio broadcast to reassure people. Rationing is introduced. The Christmas speech becomes a yearly tradition.

The war continues. The King’s hair is beginning to grey as he and Logue prepare a speech for Empire Day. Logue listens to the speech, marveling at the progress the King has made. The King is proud. The Nazis are winning in the war. Logue’s eldest son is conscripted. London is bombed. Logue assists with another Christmas speech. As he listens, he stops following along because he realizes that there is no need.

By 1943, the war has turned in the Allies’ favor. The King visits North Africa. All three Logue boys are now serving in the military. Logue’s business suffers due to the war and the King donates £500 as a means of thanking Logue. They prepare a speech for the eve of D-Day, which is a great success. The war continues, as does the bombing of London. The King delivers the Christmas speech without Logue, and it is a great success.

The Allies win the war. The entire country celebrates. Later, while Logue is undergoing surgery, Myrtle suffers a heart attack. Logue is devastated. Logue continues to work, though he sells the large (and now empty) family house. He is lonely and develops an interest in psychics. The King’s daughter marries, and the King’s health worsens.

The King delivers his final Christmas speech in 1951 and dies in his sleep a short time later. He and Logue corresponded up until his death. Logue recovers from his own illness to write to the Queen, mourning the loss of her husband. Princess Elizabeth is crowned Queen Elizabeth II. Logue dies in 1953 as a result of kidney failure. He does not survive to see Elizabeth’s coronation, though he is invited.

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Home > Blog > Rhetorical Analysis Essay Examples and Best Practices

Rhetorical Analysis Essay Examples and Best Practices

• Smodin Editorial Team
• Updated: August 13, 2024
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Are you having trouble creating a high-quality rhetorical analysis essay? Then you’ll love the rhetorical analysis essay examples and best practices in this article. We’ll share the best ways to improve the quality of your content and get top marks with your assignment.

Let’s dive in!

What Is a Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Examples and Key Elements

A rhetorical analysis essay examines how authors or speakers use rhetoric to persuade, inform, or entertain their audience. It is not a persuasive essay . It involves breaking down a piece of communication, such as a speech, article, or advertisement. This helps you to understand the strategies employed to achieve its purpose.

Still want more details about what is a rhetorical analysis essay? No problem! The essay typically focuses on three primary elements, which are as follows:

• Ethos: Ethos refers to the credibility and character of the speaker or writer. You can use it to establish trust and authority. It helps convince the audience of the speaker’s reliability and expertise on the subject. Furthermore, you can convey ethos through the speaker’s qualifications, reputation, ethical behavior, and the use of credible sources.
• Pathos: Pathos appeals to the audience’s emotions. It aims to evoke feelings that will lead the audience to accept the speaker’s viewpoint. You can achieve this through storytelling, vivid imagery, emotionally charged language, and personal anecdotes. Also, pathos is effective in creating a connection with the audience and making the argument more relatable and impactful.
• Logos: Logos is the appeal to logic and reason. It involves the use of evidence, facts, statistics, and logical arguments to support a claim. Therefore, you can add a rhetorical analysis body paragraph about the extent of evidence the author provides.

To write a rhetorical analysis essay, one must first identify the purpose and audience of the text. Next, analyze the rhetorical strategies the author decided to use. This includes considering how effectively they contribute to the overall message. Also, examine the use of language, tone, imagery, and structure.

An Example of a Rhetorical Analysis

Let’s take Martin Luther King Jr’s speech, “I have a dream” as our rhetorical analysis example. The speech masterfully uses rhetorical strategies to inspire action for civil rights. Martin Luther King Jr establishes his credibility (ethos) by aligning with historical figures and documents, which enhances his moral authority.

Furthermore, he evokes strong emotions (pathos) through vivid imagery and the repetitive phrase “I have a dream.” This creates a hopeful vision for the future. Additionally, he employs logical arguments (logos) by highlighting broken promises and referencing American ideals of liberty and equality.

This blend of ethos, pathos, and logos makes his speech a powerful, and a call for justice and equality.

How to Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Best Practices and Top Tips

Now, let’s look at some of the key rhetorical concepts to create an essay that will get you top marks. The idea is to use these best practices to save time and simplify the writing process. Also, they ensure you don’t miss out on important points that deliver on what you shared in the thesis statement.

So, consider the following if you want to know how to write a rhetorical analysis essay and what to include in each section of your essay.

Understand the Text

Thoroughly read and understand the text before you begin the analysis stage. After all, how can you create a rhetorical essay on a piece of literature you don’t fully understand? You may feel like saving time by skimming the content, but it will lead to an inaccurate and slower writing process.

You’ll need to identify the author’s purpose, audience, and the main argument. Additionally, take notes on key points, recurring themes, and the overall tone. Understanding the context in which the text was created is crucial for an accurate analysis. Hence, pay attention to the historical, cultural, and social factors.

Identify Rhetorical Strategies

Focus on the three primary rhetorical appeals, which are ethos, pathos, and logos. Make sure to analyze how the author uses these strategies to persuade the audience. Then look for specific examples, such as language choices, emotional anecdotes, or logical arguments that illustrate these techniques.

Organize Your Essay

Create a clear rhetorical analysis essay outline that includes an introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion format . The rhetorical analysis introduction should present the text being analyzed and your thesis statement. Also, each body paragraph should focus on a specific rhetorical strategy or element by providing evidence and analysis.

You’ll need to create a rhetorical analysis conclusion by summarizing your main points and restating the significance of your analysis. Make sure you summarize the main points in a way that is easy to understand. Also, leave the reader with a few final thoughts you want them to take away from the academic writing.

Use Textual Evidence

Support your analysis with direct quotes and detailed examples from the text. When citing evidence, explain how it illustrates the rhetorical strategy being discussed and its effect on the audience. Additionally, ensure that each piece of evidence is relevant and strengthens your overall argument.

However, don’t add too many direct quotes since it can clutter the flow and feel of the essay. Instead, select a few quotes that allow you to convey the key concepts of the literature piece. Generally, it’s a good idea to focus on a few key concepts rather than covering many in a shallow fashion.

Proofread and Revise

Carefully proofread your essay for grammatical and structural errors. Also, ensure that your analysis is coherent and logically organized. Revising allows you to refine your arguments, improve clarity, and ensure that your essay effectively communicates your analysis.

Furthermore, you may want to use tools that help you proofread and write a good rhetorical analysis essay. They can help you with aspects of the writing process, such as creating a clear thesis statement and logical reasoning.

Contextual Analysis

You can place the text within its broader context. This means discussing the historical, cultural, or social background that influences the text. Also, understanding the context can provide deeper insights into the rhetorical choices made by the author and how they resonate with the audience.

Maintain an Analytical Tone

Write in an objective and analytical tone for the best results. Avoid summarizing the text and instead focus on analyzing how the rhetorical strategies contribute to the author’s purpose. You’ll need to be critical and insightful, which shows a deep understanding of the text’s rhetorical techniques and their impact.

Are you unsure of how to strike the right analytical tone? Then it’s a good idea to look at different examples to learn the best practices. For example, you can look at a rhetorical analysis introduction example to get going.

How To Start a Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Examples To Help You

Do you want to know how to start a rhetorical analysis essay? We’ll now cover the basics of how you can start to get the best results. This ensures that you hit the ground running and finish the project in time for the deadline.

Here’s the step-by-step process about how to start a rhetorical analysis essay with an example to show you how it’s done:

• Understand the purpose: The goal of a rhetorical analysis essay is to examine how an author or speaker uses rhetoric to persuade, inform, or entertain an audience. For example, in analyzing Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I have a dream” speech, you would explore how King used rhetorical strategies to advocate for civil rights and inspire action.
• Read and annotate the text: Carefully read the text you are analyzing. Also, annotate key passages and note examples of rhetorical devices such as ethos, pathos, logos, diction, syntax, and imagery. For instance, you might highlight King’s use of metaphors like “the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination.”
• Formulate a thesis statement: Develop a clear thesis that presents your main argument about how the text uses rhetoric. For example, Martin Luther King Jr. effectively uses ethos, pathos, and logos to inspire his audience to pursue racial equality.

How To Write a Rhetorical Analysis Essay: Factors To Consider

You may need to look at many different examples to craft the best essay for your assignment. This ensures that you can figure out what works to get top marks. However, you shouldn’t directly copy from the example you come across. Instead, use them for inspiration to write an essay with a great writing flow that’s unique.

Here are the top things to consider when looking at a rhetorical analysis essay:

• Thesis statement example: Pay attention to the thesis statement example to better understand the type of issues you may need to address. This allows you to craft your own statement, which makes for a good topic to tackle.
• Analytical depth: Evaluate the depth of analysis in explaining how rhetorical strategies contribute to the text’s purpose. That’s because a strong essay goes beyond surface-level observations to provide insightful commentary on the effectiveness of these strategies.
• Logical organization: Check for a clear and logical structure, with each paragraph focusing on a specific aspect of the analysis. The organization should help guide the reader through the argument in a coherent and systematic way. You can emulate this organizational structure to improve the readability of your own essay.
• Conclusive summary: Look for a strong conclusion that summarizes the main points and reiterates the significance of the analysis. Furthermore, the conclusion should tie together the essay’s arguments and reflect on the overall impact of the rhetorical strategies.

AP Lang Rhetorical Analysis Essay Example

To write an AP Lang rhetorical analysis essay, start by carefully reading the text and identifying the author’s purpose, audience, and main argument. You’ll need to begin your essay with an introduction that includes the title, author, and context of the text. Also, don’t forget about the clear thesis statement.

In the body paragraphs, focus on specific rhetorical strategies such as ethos, pathos, and logos. you’ll also need to focus on using ethos, pathos, and logos, which we covered above.

Maintain an objective and analytical tone throughout your essay. You can achieve this by organizing your paragraphs logically, with each focusing on a different strategy or element.

Finally, conclude by summarizing your main points and reiterating the significance of the rhetorical strategies in achieving the author’s purpose. Make sure to proofread your essay for clarity and coherence to ensure a polished final piece. If you are unsure of how to structure your essay, you can always check out AP Lang rhetorical analysis essay examples online .

Frequently Asked Questions

What should i include in a rhetorical analysis essay introduction.

The introduction to the rhetorical analysis essay should provide background information on the text. This includes the author, title, and context. Also, it should present the purpose of the rhetorical analysis and your thesis statement.

Make sure that the thesis briefly mentions the main rhetorical strategies you will discuss to guide the reader on what to expect in the essay body. You’ll get better at doing this with practice and keep it brief.

How do I analyze ethos in a rhetorical analysis essay?

To analyze ethos in a rhetorical analysis essay, you need to evaluate how the author establishes credibility and authority. Look for references to their qualifications, experience, or reputation. Additionally, consider the tone and language used to build trust and rapport with the audience.

Discuss how these elements contribute to the overall persuasiveness of the text, which means you’ll need to read it in detail. It’s handy to make notes with regard to ethos evaluation as you work on the project.

How do I analyze logos in a rhetorical analysis essay?

To analyze logos in a rhetorical analysis essay, focus on the logical structure and evidence presented in the text. Also, identify examples of facts, statistics, logical arguments, and reasoning used to support the author’s claims.

You’ll also need to evaluate the clarity and coherence of these arguments and how they contribute to the overall persuasiveness of the text. This latter part is more tricky and takes practice before you can get it right.

What are common mistakes to avoid when writing a rhetorical analysis essay?

Common mistakes to avoid when writing a rhetorical analysis essay include summarizing the text instead of analyzing it. This is not the point of the content, and you need to avoid doing this since it can result in a low grade.

Furthermore, you need to avoid neglecting to support claims with evidence and failing to address the effectiveness of rhetorical strategies. Also, avoid focusing too much on one type of appeal (ethos, pathos, or logos) to the detriment of others.

Can I use a first-person perspective in a rhetorical analysis essay?

While rhetorical analysis essays are typically written in the third person to maintain an objective tone, there are instances where a first-person perspective might be appropriate. However, it is essential to use it sparingly and ensure that the focus remains on the text and its rhetorical strategies.

You may want to look at a rhetorical analysis essay example that uses the first person to learn. You can use your findings to improve the quality of your essay and make sure you strike the right balance.

Use Smodin AI To Write Your Rhetorical Analysis Essay

The best practices in this article will help you create a high-quality rhetorical analysis essay. Therefore, you can get top marks in your class or improve on your personal best. You’ll see that there’s a method to the madness, such as following the right structure.

Now that you know how to write a rhetorical analysis essay, you can begin the process. Make sure that you remember the rules about ethos, logos, and pathos to write the best content. This will also help you craft the introduction, body paragraphs, and conclusion sections.

Do you still need help with your visual rhetorical analysis essay? Then you can use Smodin AI to improve the overall quality of your essay. The tool can proofread your work or help generate text that meets your exact requirements.

So what are you waiting for? Give Smodin AI a try today and craft top-quality essays!

Breaking News

News Analysis: Trump seeks to reclaim spotlight with old playbook of lying, talking smack to media

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Standing next to a spread of coffee, cereal and breakfast meats at his New Jersey golf club on Thursday, former President Trump started what he billed as his second news conference in as many weeks by highlighting increased costs of everyday foodstuffs due to inflation — a major issue for voters in November.

Then, he veered off into a rambling 40-minute speech — uninterrupted by media questions — in which he aired old political grievances and debunked conspiracy theories, and lied, repeatedly, about the state of the economy, the safety of the nation and the policies of Vice President Kamala Harris, who is running against him in the presidential race.

Among other things, Trump made the false claim — easily debunked — that Harris, a former San Francisco district attorney and California attorney general, made it legal for thieves in California to “rob a store” if what they take is worth less than $950.

Thieves are “going into stores with calculators, calculating how much it is, because if it’s less than $950, they can rob it and not get charged,” Trump said. “That was her that did that.”

Trump’s event was part of a new campaign strategy to draw a contrast with Harris, whom the Trump campaign has been hammering for not taking media questions as she rides a wave of Democratic enthusiasm . But it and other recent events have had the additional effect of reviving a much older Trump strategy for drumming up attention — which is essentially for him to stand in front of reporters and talk smack.

Trump says he’s ‘entitled to personal attacks’ on Harris in rambling news conference

At a news conference at his New Jersey golf club, Trump said he thinks he’s ‘entitled to personal attacks’ on his Democratic rival, saying he’s ‘very angry’ at her because of the criminal charges he faces.

Aug. 15, 2024

At his recent events, Trump has delivered a steady stream of insults about the country, about Harris and about the media — which have responded by showering him with headlines.

Some of those headlines have been critical, such as an NPR analysis that concluded Trump made at least 162 “misstatements, exaggerations and outright lies” during his hourlong presser at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida last week — or “more than two a minute.”

However, many others have simply repeated his most outrageous claims, furthering their reach.

The Harris campaign has largely ignored calls for her to speak more often with the media — which has frustrated reporters — and responded instead by mocking Trump’s gaggles as pathetic grabs for the spotlight. Before Trump’s Thursday event, for example, the Harris campaign predicted to the press that the GOP nominee would “deliver another self-obsessed rant full of his own personal grievances to distract from his toxic Project 2025 agenda, unpopular running mate, and increasing detachment from the reality of the voters who will decide this election.”

“Tune in for the same old thing,” the message concluded. In another statement after the event, which it called “Our statement on Trump’s ... whatever that was,” the Harris campaign reduced Trump’s long speech into him having “huffed and puffed.”

Jennifer Mercieca, a political historian and communications professor at Texas A&M and author of “Demagogue for President: The Rhetorical Genius of Donald Trump,” said the Republican’s latest use of news conferences — and interviews with sycophants such as billionaire Elon Musk, who this week lobbed softball questions to the former vice president on his social platform X — is classic Trump.

“It’s information warfare. He wants to flood the zone with his content, he wants us to be talking about what he wants us to talk about, through his frame,” she said. “He cares about dominating — dominating the news cycle — and these press conferences provide him with an opportunity to dominate the news cycle.”

Many of Trump’s deviations from the truth stem from his style of political speech , where he routinely speaks in superlatives and employs populist language to cast himself as a strongman leader who can do no wrong. In his version of things, everything he does is the best or the “greatest,” while any plan, policy or output from his opponents is the “worst.”

At Thursday’s event, Trump was cheered by a group of supporters — making it feel more like a campaign event than a news one — and took only a handful of questions, some of which seemed teed-up for him, such as one in which he was asked why God decided to save him during the attempt on his life in Butler, Pa.

He railed against California and Gov. Gavin Newsom — whom he called “Newscum” — and suggested Harris had destroyed the state.

“San Francisco, you know, was a great city 15 years ago. Now it’s considered almost unlivable. You can’t live there,” he said.

Column: What Trump’s crowd obsession says about him — and the race for the White House

As Kamala Harris and Tim Walz draw larger crowds, Donald Trump’s frenzy shows he’s struggling against his surging opponent and a startling new political reality.

Aug. 14, 2024

He repeated a false claim that all new jobs in the country are going to migrants, and said if Harris is elected, the U.S. would have a “1929 crash” — a reference to the Great Depression — and watch Social Security and “probably the nation itself” go bankrupt.

“You don’t have to imagine what a Kamala Harris presidency would be,” he said, “because you’re living through that nightmare right now.”

He said Harris “is in favor of the death of the American dream,” and repeatedly insinuated that the 2020 election was stolen, which it was not . And as with his other recent media events, he ridiculed the press — at one point alleging without any evidence that members of the “fake news” were destroying old video that would prove Harris has flip-flopped on policy.

“All you have to do is go back and look at your tapes — which many have been discarded, discarded by the fake news, because they don’t want people to see what she said just a year ago,” Trump said.

Robert C. Rowland, a professor of rhetoric at the University of Kansas and author of the book “The Rhetoric of Donald Trump: Nationalist Populism and American Democracy,” said Trump has never shown any real capacity to focus on policy, at least not in any detail. The former president has always spoken off the cuff about what threatens his base.

That can work, but it has become more difficult lately, Rowland said, as inflation has slowed , food prices have moderated and some wages have been increasing. Making matters worse for Trump is that his ramblings are becoming less coherent than ever.

“That tendency to ramble, to elaborate on stream of consciousness and to brag shamelessly — all of those things have become much stronger, and much less coherent than in 2016 and 2020,” Rowland said. “The stream of consciousness has become less clearly connected to real events, and more connected to a sense of grievance and anger.”

Mercieca said that politicians answering questions directly from the media is a good thing — an important part of any democracy — but that Trump has managed to flip that on its head, using his lies to undermine the media, people’s trust in the Fourth Estate and “democracy itself.”

Trump says whatever he wants — truthful or not, bigoted or braggadocian or cruel — because he knows the media will repeat it, and because he knows he won’t be checked on any of it by his base or the Republican establishment, which has handed the party over to him.

To avoid being used, Mercieca said, reporters should write about Trump’s “news conferences” only if he says something newsworthy, not whenever he says anything outrageous — because the latter, at this point, is his standard shtick, a stump speech that’s old news.

“When a plane lands safely, that’s not news, because it happens every five seconds,” Mercieca said. “When Trump says something outrageous, that’s not news, because it happens every five seconds.”

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Kevin Rector is a legal affairs reporter for the Los Angeles Times covering the California Supreme Court, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals and other legal trends and issues, and chipping in on coverage of the 2024 election. He started with The Times in 2020 and previously covered the Los Angeles Police Department for the paper. Before that, Rector worked at the Baltimore Sun for eight years, where he was a police and investigative reporter and part of a team that won the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in local reporting. More recently, he was part of a Times team awarded the 2023 Everett McKinley Dirksen Award for Distinguished Reporting of Congress for coverage of Sen. Dianne Feinstein. He is from Maryland.

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D.N.C. Live Updates: Tim Walz to Introduce Himself to the Nation

After speeches on the second night of the Democratic National Convention from Michelle and Barack Obama, Night 3 will feature Mr. Walz, the party’s vice-presidential nominee, as well as Bill Clinton.

• Share full article

Michael D. Shear

Reporting from Chicago

Here’s what to expect in Chicago on Wednesday.

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota will speak to the largest audience of his political career on Wednesday night as he formally accepts the Democratic nomination for vice president. His speech, on Day 3 of this week’s political coronation in Chicago, will be the biggest test so far of the choice by Vice President Kamala Harris to put the jovial, blunt-spoken Midwesterner on the ticket.

Before Mr. Walz’s keynote speech, former President Bill Clinton is scheduled to whip up the crowd, two days after his wife, Hillary Clinton, energized the delegates with a passionate plea for Ms. Harris to finally break the presidential glass ceiling.

Former President Donald J. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio, will campaign this afternoon in Asheboro, N.C., focusing on national security in a state that Mr. Trump won twice. The Republican ticket appeared to be on solid footing in North Carolina before President Biden withdrew from the race last month and endorsed Ms. Harris. She edged ahead of Mr. Trump in the state in a recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College .

Here’s what else to watch for today:

The theme: At the Democratic convention, organizers say the speeches tonight will fit broadly into the theme of “A Fight for Our Freedoms.” It is an expansive category that will allow speakers to address legislative fights for abortion rights and health care, champion working families or touch on the need to defend democracy at home and abroad. Campaign officials predicted even more of a focus on Mr. Trump, accusing him of “again running on an extreme agenda to go even farther in turning back the clock on all the freedoms we hold dear.”

The 42nd president: Mr. Clinton is expected to continue the parade of big-name Democrats at the convention with an evening address aimed at demonstrating how the party has coalesced behind Ms. Harris. In speeches, Mrs. Clinton, former President Barack Obama and his wife, Michelle, the former first lady, have all called on Democrats to rally behind Ms. Harris and Mr. Walz.

The blue wall: With two days left on the convention schedule, several “blue state” governors have not yet given speeches, including Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, who was a finalist for the vice-presidential spot on the ticket. Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, is also expected to speak this week. All three represent electorally competitive states, and Ms. Harris will most likely need to win some combination of them to secure a victory over Mr. Trump in a close race. Convention organizers have yet to say when the governors will appear on the stage, but it’s a safe bet that they will do so before the week is over.

The veep : The big moment tonight will be when Mr. Walz takes the stage. Largely unknown across the country before he joined Ms. Harris on the ticket, Mr. Walz has so far proved to be a feisty speaker with an aw-shucks manner but a sharp tongue when he attacks Republicans and Mr. Trump.

Neil Vigdor contributed reporting.

Maggie Astor

Speakers at the convention tonight — before the vice-presidential nominee, Tim Walz — will include Senators Cory Booker, Chris Murphy, Catherine Cortez Masto and Amy Klobuchar; the House minority leader, Hakeem Jeffries; former Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland; Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania; Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg; and former President Bill Clinton, party officials just announced at a press conference.

As was the case on the first two nights, Republicans will also speak: Olivia Troye, who served in the Trump administration, and Geoff Duncan, the former lieutenant governor of Georgia. And we’ll hear from “everyday Americans whose freedoms and livelihoods hinge on this election,” said the executive director of the convention committee, Alex Hornbrook.

Neil Vigdor

Hulk Hogan, whose shirt-ripping show of fealty to Donald Trump hyped up last month’s Republican convention, mocked Vice President Kamala Harris’s racial identity and suggested that he could use some of his wrestling moves on her during a beer promotion event in Ohio on Monday. In a video obtained by TMZ , Hogan, whose real name is Terry Bollea, asked fans at a bar, “Do you want me to body slam Kamala Harris?” mispronouncing Harris’s first name. “You want me to drop the leg on Kamala?”

The entertainer, echoing Trump’s attacks on Harris’s dual racial identities , then said: “Is Kamala a chameleon? Is she Indian?” Harris, a Black woman whose father is from Jamaica and whose mother was from India, has long embraced both of her racial identities .

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‘The Run-Up’ Team

What Gaza protesters and uncommitted delegates want.

After two days of the Democratic National Convention, one thing is clear: Democrats are united.

The unity is such that after months of worrying about whether the convention would be upended by protests over Israel’s war in Gaza, things feel relatively quiet on that front.

But does anger over foreign policy still pose an electoral threat to Kamala Harris?

On today’s Run-Up, Astead Herndon speaks with people who came to protest in Chicago and Abbas Alawieh, an uncommitted delegate from Michigan.

Katie Glueck

Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, who is speaking at the Democratic National Convention tonight as the party’s vice-presidential candidate, will be nominated by Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota and Ben Ingman, Walz’s former student and neighbor, according to the campaign. Walz was Ingman's coach for seventh-grade basketball and track, the campaign said.

Annie Karni

Reporting from Washington

Peltola ranks first in the Alaska House primary.

Representative Mary Peltola, Democrat of Alaska, ranked first on Tuesday in an open primary to set the field for her re-election bid, claiming just over 50 percent of the vote in preliminary results, well ahead of 11 challengers vying for her position as the state’s sole member of the House.

The results put Ms. Peltola in a strong position for the general election in November, setting the stage for a possible replay of her successful run in 2022, when Republicans split their party’s support in the state’s unusual ranked-choice system and propelled her to victory.

Nick Begich III, the Republican son of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska, who ran for the seat in 2022 and has been endorsed by the right-wing House Freedom Caucus, ranked second, with 27 percent, according to The Associated Press . He beat out Nancy Dahlstrom, the Republican lieutenant governor endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson, who had 20 percent, according to the A.P., which reported the results Wednesday morning with nearly 90 percent of the state’s precincts tallied. They were the only two challengers in the race who had reported raising any money.

Mr. Begich had said he would drop out of the race if he finished behind Ms. Dahlstrom, which Democrats feared could make for a tougher contest for Ms. Peltola, consolidating Republican support behind a single viable G.O.P. candidate instead of splintering it among several, as happened when she won the seat in 2022. But Ms. Dahlstrom has made no such commitment, and Ms. Peltola’s commanding lead suggested she could prevail even if Republicans united behind one challenger.

The results of Tuesday’s primary shrank the pool of candidates from 12 to four who will advance to the general election. Matthew Salisbury, a Republican, was in fourth place with 0.6 percent of the vote. In November, voters will again rank the candidates, and the preferences will be tallied until one candidate receives a majority.

Ms. Peltola scored an upset victory in a special election in 2022 in part because many Republican voters who backed Mr. Begich as their first choice crossed party lines and listed Ms. Peltola as their second. When Mr. Begich failed to secure a majority, 15,000 of his votes went to Ms. Peltola, helping her to narrowly defeat the polarizing Republican front-runner, former Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, who had also been backed by Mr. Trump.

Proponents of ranked-choice systems like Alaska’s said this was an example of why it is a superior system: When voters have more choices, they’re less likely to vote strictly along party lines, allowing independent-minded or more centrist candidates to fare better.

Ms. Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, and the first Democrat in half a century to represent the state in the House, won her seat in 2022 by talking about civility in politics and running on a platform of “fish, family and freedom.”

One of the most vulnerable House Democrats, Ms. Peltola has continued hammering those themes as a way to position herself as an independent voice. The National Rifle Association earlier this month endorsed Ms. Peltola , an extremely rare case in which the powerful pro-gun lobby backed a Democrat.

Last month, Ms. Peltola, whose husband died last year when the single-engine plane he was piloting crashed in the mountains of southwestern Alaska, announced she was skipping a week of votes in Washington to prepare fish with her family for winter storage.

“Representative Peltola will be in the state putting up fish with family to fill freezers for the winter,” her office said in a statement. “Mary’s family — as well as her late husband’s family — relies in part on her for subsistence duties.”

Ms. Peltola drew ire from Democrats last month when she told reporters that she was “keeping an open mind” about the presidential race and declined to endorse Vice President Kamala Harris .

She later clarified her position on social media, writing: “I’m not voting for Trump & I’m not endorsing anyone else either.”

Fifty of Donald Trump’s Republican allies in Congress who are military veterans sent a letter to Gov. Tim Walz , the Democratic vice-presidential nominee, excoriating him over his past characterizations of his Army National Guard record. The letter, printed on the Trump-Vance campaign letterhead and reported earlier by Politico , accused Walz of exaggerating his military service, including his rank, and quitting the National Guard two decades ago to avoid being deployed to Iraq.

“You have violated the trust of our brothers and sisters in arms,” the letter said. “Their blood, sweat, and sacrifice are the only reason our nation is able to exist. Until you admit you lied to them, there is no way you can be trusted to serve as Vice President.” Walz has acknowledged that he misspoke about some aspects of his record, but has fervently denied that he intentionally misled people.

Katie Rogers

Reporting from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago

Michelle Obama, thrashing Trump, suggests the presidency is a ‘Black job.’

Michelle obama speaks on second night of democratic convention, the former first lady delivered a takedown of former president donald j. trump, asking, “who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘black jobs’”.

For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us. See, his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hard-working, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black. I want to know. I want to know who’s going to tell him? Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?

Michelle Obama, the former first lady and one of the most popular figures in the Democratic Party, delivered one of the Democratic National Convention’s most emphatic takedowns of former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday night and turned one of his most controversial campaign lines against him: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those ‘Black jobs’?” she said.

Mrs. Obama, a reluctant campaigner, enthralled a packed arena in Chicago with a convention appearance that lent firepower to Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign. She offered support and praise for Ms. Harris, but focused much of her nearly 20-minute speech squarely on Mr. Trump, mocking his past comments, his background and his behavior, while mostly avoiding naming him.

And for a speech delivered at a political convention, her remarks struck a remarkably personal tone as she spoke of the former president, who led a multiyear campaign to question the birthplace of her husband, former President Barack Obama.

“For years, Donald Trump did everything in his power to try to make people fear us,” she said, adding that “his limited, narrow view of the world made him feel threatened by the existence of two hardworking, highly educated, successful people who happen to be Black.”

She zeroed in on his debate-night complaint about immigrants taking “Black jobs” by pointing out that the presidency of the United States has been one and might soon be again. She said that Americans like Ms. Harris understood “that most of us will never be afforded the grace of failing forward,” a reference to Mr. Trump’s business troubles. She noted that most Americans do not grow up with “the affirmative action of generational wealth.” (Mr. Trump was born into a wealthy family in Queens.)

“If we see a mountain in front of us, we don’t expect there to be an escalator waiting to take us to the top,” she said. Line by line, she received thunderous applause.

Mrs. Obama’s speech, delivered with a clear voice as she looked straight into the camera to address Americans watching at home, was not saccharine. She began her time onstage by framing her remarks in the context of reaching for hope through despair.

She gave a tribute to her mother, Marian Robinson , who died in May. Mrs. Obama said that she had not been sure she would be stable enough to take the stage on Tuesday night. When the Obamas took office in 2009, her mother left Chicago and moved into the White House to help raise Sasha and Malia Obama.

“The last time I was here in my hometown was to memorialize my mother, the woman who showed me the meaning of hard work and humility and decency, the woman who set my moral compass high and showed me the power of my own voice,” Mrs. Obama said.

The former first lady remains one of the best-known public figures in America, ranking fifth on a list of prominent people compiled by YouGov , a market research firm. (Her husband ranks sixth.) And she is so popular within her party that her name is constantly near the top of polling wish lists for Democratic voters when they are asked whom they would like to see run for the presidency. Her office regularly swats down talk of her candidacy, and last did so in March , when rumors swirled among Republicans and Democrats about the possibility.

As first lady, Mrs. Obama brought an element of cool to the White House. She turned it into a destination for celebrity-filled state dinners and appeared often on late-night television programs and talk shows. She would mix chain-store brands like J. Crew into her wardrobe, to lend an air of accessibility to her public image.

Her husband is considered one of the party’s greatest orators, but Mrs. Obama has rhetorical gifts of her own. Few speakers at the convention were able to engage in a back-and-forth with thousands of people at the United Center in the way she did. “So if they lie about her — and they will — we’ve got to do something,” she said at one point about likely Republican attacks on Ms. Harris. By the time she was finished with the sentence, the crowd was speaking the last part of it back to her.

And it is Mrs. Obama who coined a famous phrase adopted by the party — at least for a while — during the 2016 campaign: “When they go low, we go high,” she said eight years ago at the Democratic convention in Philadelphia.

On Tuesday evening, she delivered an update of sorts: “Going small is never the answer,” she said. “Small is petty, it’s unhealthy and, quite frankly, it’s unpresidential.”

She warned that the race ahead was still close, and asked her party to continue working in the days ahead. “We cannot indulge our anxieties about whether this country will elect someone like Kamala instead of doing everything we can to get someone like Kamala elected,” Mrs. Obama said.

Minutes later, her husband was onstage, calling himself “the only person stupid enough to speak after Michelle Obama.”

Kellen Browning

A G.O.P. mayor in Arizona urged moderates to vote for the ‘adults in the room.’

John Giles, the Republican mayor of Mesa, Ariz., delivered a brief, targeted message on Tuesday night to moderates and Republicans, urging them to join him in supporting Vice President Kamala Harris over their own party’s nominee.

“I feel more at home here than in today’s Republican Party,” said Mr. Giles, who oversees a city of 500,000 east of Phoenix. “Let’s put adults in the room that our country deserves.”

Mr. Giles’s presence and prime time speaking slot at the convention was a sign of how Democrats are working to sway independents and convert anti-Trump conservatives in their bid to hold onto the White House. Ms. Harris has reinvigorated the Democratic base, but polling has suggested some voters view her as more liberal than President Biden and too liberal for them.

Mr. Giles, the rare Republican mayor of a large city, will try to help her soothe those concerns. He is the most prominent Republican to back her in Arizona, a key battleground state and longtime conservative bastion that has been trending purple in recent elections.

Last month, he penned an opinion piece in The Arizona Republic endorsing Ms. Harris. He positioned himself as a member of the moderate wing of the Republican Party in Arizona in the mold of John McCain, the longtime senator who died in 2018. His kind is a bit of an anomaly in today’s state party, which has veered sharply to the right. After the publication, he embarked on a media blitz and spoke at Ms. Harris’s campaign rally in Glendale, Ariz.

“I have an urgent message for the majority of Americans who, like me, are in the political middle,” Mr. Giles said at the convention on Tuesday. “John McCain’s Republican Party is gone, and you don’t owe a damn thing to what’s been left behind.”

Mr. Giles, a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, could also appeal to Mormon voters, who helped Mr. Biden win Arizona in 2020. And he could prove an important messenger on immigration, a top priority in Arizona that Republicans view as a particular vulnerability for Ms. Harris.

“Immigration is not an issue here: It is the issue here,” he said in an interview last month, stressing that Ms. Harris needed to remind voters that former President Donald J. Trump tanked a bipartisan bill that would have boosted border security. “The other side has done a good job of demonizing her on that issue, unfairly I would say.”

Nicholas Nehamas and Reid J. Epstein

Nicholas Nehamas reported from Kamala Harris’s rally in Milwaukee. Reid J. Epstein reported from the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

Harris, in a show of force, holds a large rally 80 miles from her convention.

Harris campaigns in milwaukee during day 2 of d.n.c., vice president kamala harris and her running mate, gov. tim walz, rallied the crowds the critical battleground state of wisconsin..

We are so honored to be your nominees. This is a people-powered campaign, and together we will chart a new way forward. So Wisconsin, we have 77 days until the election — 77 days. And look, we know this is going to be a tight race until the very end. We have some hard work ahead of us. We have hard work ahead of us, but we like hard work. Hard work is good work. And with your help this November, we will win. We’ll win. We will win. We will win.

Democrats managed to be in two places at once on Tuesday night, holding a ceremonial roll-call vote at their Chicago convention to celebrate Vice President Kamala Harris as their party’s nominee, while she herself rallied supporters roughly 80 miles north in Milwaukee.

Ms. Harris’s choice to appear in Milwaukee, the largest city in a crucial battleground state, was intentional and pointed: She stood onstage in the same arena where former President Donald J. Trump accepted the Republican nomination last month.

For much of the evening in Milwaukee, the Harris campaign used the arena’s Jumbotron to pipe in the events taking place in Chicago at the Democratic National Convention. But after Gov. Gavin Newsom of California announced his state’s votes for Ms. Harris, ending the roll call of 57 states and territories, Ms. Harris and her running mate, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, marched onto the stage in Milwaukee.

For a moment, she was speaking to two packed arenas at the same time, celebrating the roll-call vote in front of tens of thousands of people, with millions more watching on screens. The two-city rally represented a significant flexing of Democratic muscle with the presidential election just 76 days away.

“We are so honored to be your nominees,” Ms. Harris said. “Together, we will chart a new way forward.”

The Milwaukee rally was just the latest event at which the Harris campaign filled a major arena with Democrats. For more than a year, they had largely stayed away from events featuring President Biden, who drew crowds only in the low thousands.

Choosing Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee as the venue for Ms. Harris’s rally also served as an intentional rejoinder to Mr. Trump, who has fumed over the size of her crowds since she replaced Mr. Biden on the Democratic ticket. The campaign said about 15,000 people attended the rally in Milwaukee, and the 23,500-person convention hall in Chicago was packed.

The Harris campaign and Democrats have been trolling Mr. Trump for weeks, calling him “weird,” boasting about the size of their rallies and angering him by rolling out a policy similar to his own on eliminating federal taxes on tips. The former president — who struggles even in the best of circumstances to stay on message — has responded in sometimes bizarre fashion in public and venomously ranted about Ms. Harris behind closed doors.

Before Ms. Harris spoke, Mr. Walz took the stage to taunt Republicans and Mr. Trump for the Democrats’ Milwaukee takeover.

“Not only do we have massive energy at our convention, we’ve got a hell of a lot more energy at where they had their convention!” Mr. Walz said, adding a dig at the former president: “Oh, that one guy’s going to be so sad tonight.”

At the same time, thousands more Democrats showed up in Chicago to hear a lineup of speakers headlined by Barack and Michelle Obama, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Doug Emhoff, Ms. Harris’s husband. Organizers estimated that more than 20,000 had attended the convention’s first night on Monday.

The joint events on Tuesday underscored how the boundaries of traditional political conventions have changed since Democrats held their 2020 convention virtually because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mayor Cavalier Johnson of Milwaukee, who commuted back from Chicago for the rally, said filling arenas in two cities showed that Ms. Harris was “mobilizing people and creating enthusiasm the likes of which we haven’t seen since 2008, when Barack Obama initially ran for president.”

And he said Mr. Trump would surely notice: “To do this in the same arena where he just accepted the nomination, I think it’s going to get under his skin.”

Mr. Johnson was one of the few notable Wisconsin Democratic officials to travel back north from Chicago for the rally. The governor and other statewide elected officials remained with the state’s delegation to cast Wisconsin’s votes for Ms. Harris during the roll call, which was also broadcast in Milwaukee. Representative Gwen Moore flew up with Ms. Harris for the rally.

“We’re doing this and that at the same time,” Gov. Tony Evers said from the front row of the Wisconsin delegation. “We’re walking and chewing gum.”

Milwaukee was selected to host the Democratic convention in 2020, but the pandemic forced the party to make the event virtual. The rally featuring Ms. Harris served as something of a make-up gesture in an important battleground state.

Mr. Trump’s inability so far to land a consistent line of attack against Ms. Harris has contributed to her rising standing in the polls. A race that seemed likely to end in Mr. Trump’s favor when Mr. Biden was on the ticket is now seen as a nail-biter. And she leads the former president in Wisconsin, according to a New York Times polling average .

But Mr. Trump’s aides have argued that Ms. Harris, who since becoming the nominee has yet to sit down for an extended interview with journalists, is experiencing a “honeymoon” phase that will end as voters learn more about her. The Trump campaign and its allies have invested in advertisements portraying Ms. Harris as too liberal, weak on the border and tied at the hip to Mr. Biden and his policies.

The theme of the Harris rally on Tuesday night was “freedom,” a word that was plastered on signs and electronic billboards around the arena. Attendees were given electronic wristbands that flashed red, white and blue, creating a patriotic rhythm of color in the stands. Freedom will also be the theme of the convention speeches on Wednesday night.

Ms. Harris used her remarks in Milwaukee to lean further into what has become a sustained attack on Mr. Trump for appointing Supreme Court justices who voted to end the constitutional right to an abortion.

“Just yesterday when he was asked if he had any regrets about ending Roe v. Wade, Donald Trump, without even a moment’s hesitation — you would think he would reflect on it for a second — said, ‘No, no regrets,’” Ms. Harris said. “Bad behavior should result in a consequence. Well, we will make sure he does face a consequence, and that will be at the ballot box in November.”

Delegates ‘get low’ with Lil Jon in a boisterous musical roll-call vote for Harris.

D.n.c. holds enthusiastic roll call to nominate harris, delegates from each state and territory cast votes to nominate vice president kamala harris as the official standard-bearer of the democratic party..

“Ladies and gentlemen, my name is DJ Cassidy, and I’d like to welcome you all to the Democratic National Convention Roll Call.” “The great State of Illinois.” “The Commonwealth of Virginia.” “My beloved South Dakota.” “Louisiana.” “Nebraska.” “Kansas.” “Colorado proudly cast its votes —” “For the first Black woman president of the United States States of America.” “Kamala D. Harris.” “Ladies and gentlemen, we are here tonight to officially nominate Kamala Harris for president. D.N.C., turn down for what.” [music: “Turn Down for What”] “California, we proudly cast our 482 votes for the next president, Kamala Harris.” “We are so honored to be your nominees. This is a people-powered campaign, and together we will chart a new way forward.”

The rapper Lil Jon burst onto the floor of the Democratic convention on Tuesday night, singing a few bars of his iconic song “Turn Down for What” as delegates roared in excitement.

Then he sang: “V.P. Harris … Governor Walz” to the tune of “To the window … to the wall!” from another hit, “Get Low.”

His surprise appearance on the convention floor was part of an effort by Democrats to turn the staid tradition of the roll-call vote that nominated Vice President Kamala Harris and Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota into something of a party. Hosted by D.J. Cassidy, delegates were instructed to “pass the mic around the nation” as each state cast a symbolic vote for Ms. Harris accompanied by a meaningful tune. Some featured a surprise celebrity guest.

(Ms. Harris is already the party’s nominee, having been chosen via a virtual vote two weeks ago. But delegates on the floor saw no need to spoil the fun.)

Alabama kicked off the proceedings with “Sweet Home Alabama” rocking in the background. Colorado played a few beats from “September” by Earth, Wind & Fire — one of the band’s lead singers is from Denver.

“We know how to climb mountains, and we’re going to make sure Kamala Harris and Tim Walz reach the summit,” the state’s chosen delegate said as he cast Colorado’s votes for the Democratic ticket.

The opening lines of “Sirius,” the song used to introduce the legendary 1990s Chicago Bulls teams, played as Illinois cast its votes, but it was not Michael Jordan in front of the microphone: It was the state’s governor, JB Pritzker. Sean Astin, the actor from “Rudy” who played the title character, who tries to make the University of Notre Dame football team, had a cameo for the Indiana delegation.

California and its governor, Gavin Newsom, closed the boisterous session, with Mr. Newsom proclaiming that he was from “the great state of Nancy Pelosi” as the San Francisco politician and former speaker of the House stood beside him.

A succession of California rap songs, including “California Love” by Tupac and “Not Like Us” by Kendrick Lamar, played in the background. Ms. Harris, who is from the state, accepted the nomination as she rallied supporters in Milwaukee.

But if there was any question that Georgia Democrats lacked enthusiasm — or a taste for the spotlight — Lil Jon had the scene-stealing answer.

“We’re not going back,” he sang, leading the crowd in a chant of what has become Ms. Harris’s rallying cry.

Nick Corasaniti and Maya King contributed reporting.

David E. Sanger

Barack Obama casts Harris as the inheritor of the movement he created.

Barack obama calls for unity in soaring d.n.c. speech, former president barack obama blamed politicians and social media algorithms for deepening social and political divisions among americans..

We live in a time of such confusion and rancor, with a culture that puts a premium on things that don’t last: money, fame, status, likes. We chase the approval of strangers on our phones. We build all manner of walls and fences around ourselves, and then we wonder why we feel so alone. We don’t trust each other as much because we don’t take the time to know each other. And in that space between us, politicians and algorithms teach us to caricature each other. Control each other and fear each other. But here’s the good news, Chicago. All across America, in big cities and small towns away from all the noise, the ties that bind us together are still there. We still coach Little League and look out for our elderly neighbors. We still feed the hungry in churches and mosques and synagogues and temples. We share the same pride when our Olympic athletes compete for the gold because — because the vast majority of us do not want to live in a country that’s bitter and divided. We want something better. We want to be better. And the joy, and the excitement that we’re seeing around this campaign tells us we’re not alone.

Former President Barack Obama cast Vice President Kamala Harris on Tuesday night as the inheritor of the political movement he created, saying her candidacy had rekindled the hope that propelled him to the Oval Office 16 years ago.

In back-to-back speeches at Democratic National Convention in Chicago, the former first lady Michelle Obama and her husband, the 44th president, brought thousands of Democrats to their feet time and time again, using the chants of “Yes, we can” to revive the spirit of the 2008 election.

“Now the torch has been passed,” Mr. Obama said, evoking the words of John F. Kennedy at his 1961 inaugural, months before Mr. Obama was born. “Now it’s up to all of us to fight for the America we believe in. And make no mistake: It will be a fight.”

It was the first of many warnings that the wave of enthusiasm and rising poll numbers for Ms. Harris might not be enough to avoid a tight outcome in 11 weeks, and that former President Donald J. Trump would try to manipulate the numbers and steal the election unless Ms. Harris won an overwhelming victory.

“We don’t need four more years of bluster and chaos,” Mr. Obama said. He later needled Mr. Trump for what he called “the childish nicknames and crazy conspiracy theories and weird obsession with crowd size. It just goes on and on.”

Mrs. Obama recalled how Mr. Trump “did everything in his power to try to make people fear us.” And then she asked: “Who’s going to tell him that the job he’s currently seeking might just be one of those Black jobs?”

The line brought one of the biggest roars of the evening, and Mrs. Obama followed up by accusing Mr. Trump of “doubling down on ugly, misogynistic, racist lies as a substitute for real ideas and solutions.”

But if it was Mrs. Obama who most electrified the audience, it was her husband, one of the party’s most revered and popular figures, who made the case that Ms. Harris’s candidacy was an extension of his own. And in the vast hall of the United Center, the enthusiasm for that era contrasted in tone and power with the farewell given the previous night to President Biden.

Yet it was lost on no one that Mr. Obama has played a role in pushing Mr. Biden, his former vice president, to abandon his candidacy and turn the race over to Ms. Harris, who is 22 years younger than the sitting president.

For all the enthusiasm among Democrats for the Obamas, history suggests that their ability to transfer their own popularity to another candidate is limited. Mr. Obama came to national prominence in 2004, giving a keynote address to the Democratic convention in Boston as it nominated Senator John F. Kerry to take on President George W. Bush. Yet Mr. Kerry lost, narrowly.

In 2016, leaving office, Mr. Obama made an impassioned case for Hillary Clinton, his onetime political rival and then his secretary of state. Mrs. Clinton won the popular vote but lost in the Electoral College to Mr. Trump.

Now Mr. Obama saw a new opportunity to revive the aura of his own run, in the first major-party presidential nomination of a Black woman in American history.

The Obamas took the stage after an appearance by Ms. Harris’s husband, Doug Emhoff, who had the familiar convention task of sharing the more personal side of his spouse with the party faithful — and the prime-time television audience.

He described the details of his first, awkward, overlong phone message to her seeking a date, and followed with a touching scene of Ms. Harris, inside the vice president’s residence, setting aside the business of the day to take a long call from his daughter (and her stepdaughter), Ella.

Doug Emhoff told the story of how he met Kamala Harris and left her a voice mail message that she saved — and makes him listen to every year on their anniversary.

In 2013, I walked into a contentious client meeting. We worked through the issue, and by the end of the meeting, the now happy client offered to set me up on a blind date — [laughter] which is how I ended up with Kamala Harris’s phone number. Now, for generations, people have debated when to call the person you’re being set up with. And never in history has anyone suggested 8:30 a.m. And yet, that’s when I dialed. I got Kamala’s voicemail, and I just started rambling. “Hey, it’s Doug. I’m on my way to an early meeting. Again, it’s Doug.” I remember I was trying to grab the words out of the air and just put them back in my mouth. And for what seemed like far too many minutes, I hung up. By the way, Kamala saved that voicemail, and she makes me listen to it on every anniversary.

As with much of the Democratic convention this year, the evening was relatively devoid of any discussion of policy — a sharp contrast to Mrs. Clinton’s campaign eight years ago, and even Mr. Biden’s in 2020.

There were two notable exceptions. The convention organizers highlighted stories from women — including Mrs. Obama — who said that in vitro fertilization treatments allowed them to have children, and from others who told horror stories of medical emergencies in states that would not allow abortions.

The other exception was Mr. Obama. He made the case that Ms. Harris “helped take on the drug companies to cap the cost of insulin, lower the cost of health care and give families with kids a tax cut.” He said she had “real plans” to cut costs more.

And then he turned to what he called a “broader idea of freedom” that included “the freedom to breathe clean air and drink clean water and send your kids to school without worrying if they’ll come home.” He portrayed the Democrats as the party of nonintervention — one that allows Americans to decide “how we worship, what our family looks like, how many kids we have, who we marry.”

In short, Mr. Obama cast Mr. Trump’s Republican Party as more authoritarian than libertarian. He cast the Democrats, once known the party of regulation, as the guarantors of personal freedom. It is unclear whether voters are willing to entertain that vision of the Democratic Party’s role. And Mr. Obama’s mission on Tuesday evening was far larger than what he sought to accomplish during a packed political convention in 2016.

Back then, he was extolling the talents of Mrs. Clinton and warning of the dangers of Mr. Trump, who was widely assumed by Democrats in the room to be easily beaten. In a sense, he was handing off a baton, with the strength of the presidency behind him.

This time, he made clear that despite his “passing the torch” line, it would take far more to defeat Mr. Trump for the second time in four years.

“For all the incredible energy we’ve been able to generate over the last few weeks, this will still be a tight race in a closely divided country,” Mr. Obama said. “A country where too many Americans are still struggling and don’t believe government can help.”

Adam Nagourney

Adam Nagourney covers national politics for The New York Times. He reported this article from Los Angeles, Chicago and Glencoe, Ill.

Doug Emhoff puts his Jewish identity at the center of his campaign outreach.

“I love being Jewish,” said Doug Emhoff, the husband of Kamala Harris, the vice president and presidential candidate. “I love it. I love everything about it. I want to shout it from the mountaintops.”

Mr. Emhoff was shouting his love not from a mountaintop, but to a living room filled with Democratic donors in a 13th-floor apartment in the West Loop of Chicago, one week before the Democratic Party would gather in the city to formally nominate his wife to run for president.

In the four weeks since Ms. Harris emerged as the Democrats’ nominee, Mr. Emhoff had made clear one way he intends to help his wife win: outreach to Jewish voters. He has increasingly talked about his Jewish identity and the significance of his faith. And he has signaled that he intends to make the battle against antisemitism a central part of his portfolio as first gentleman should Ms. Harris win.

The issue has been a major message for Mr. Emhoff since Ms. Harris became vice president and he became second gentleman — he visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp in Krakow , Poland, last spring. His focus, particularly when speaking to largely Jewish audiences, have intensified, by his account, after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, followed by the backlash against Israel in the United States for its attacks on Gaza.

“This hate, this antisemitism, is a poison,” Mr. Emhoff said at a fund-raiser on an estate in Glencoe, just outside Chicago. “As your first first gentleman, I promise you, as the first Jewish person ever to be a White House principal, I am going to continue this fight against antisemitism.”

It comes as Democrats are deeply divided over the Gaza war, with many on the left assailing President Biden for his support of Israel during the conflict. (Donald J. Trump, Ms. Harris’s Republican opponent, has said that any Jewish voters who support the Democratic presidential ticket need “to get their head examined.”)

Many Democrats view Ms. Harris as more sympathetic to the Palestinian cause than Mr. Biden, and she rankled some Jewish voters by passing over Josh Shapiro, the Jewish governor of Pennsylvania, in her search for a vice president. Mr. Emhoff’s emerging role seemed intended to try to keep Jewish Democrats on board — including on Tuesday night, when he is scheduled to address the convention.

Mr. Emhoff doesn’t belong to a temple and didn’t raise his children Jewish. By his nature, low-key and self-effacing, and his background, Mr. Emhoff is particularly suited to play this kind of role in the remaining weeks of the campaign.

Thomas R. Nides, a former ambassador to Israel who is close to Ms. Harris and Mr. Emhoff, described Mr. Emhoff as a “cultural Jew.”

“He has spent a bunch of time fighting antisemitism, but to be clear he wouldn’t be doing this unless his wife was all in,” he said. “It kind of fell into his lap. But because he’s not particularly ideological, he’s very credible on this. He can talk to college kids.”

Brian Brokaw, who was a consultant to Ms. Harris when she ran for Senate and attorney general in California, and has known the couple for 10 years, said Mr. Emhoff gives his wife “a fuller picture of the deep importance that U.S. foreign policy has to American Jews.”

For Mr. Emhoff, these past few weeks are the latest chapter in a fast-paced journey that has taken him from being an entertainment lawyer in Los Angeles — where he met Ms. Harris on a blind date in 2013, when she was the attorney general of California — to the husband of the Democratic candidate for president.

He has bypassed the rite of passage of most political spouses — the Saturday night community dinners, the knocking on doors, the handing out of leaflets at a local mall — and moved right into the fast lane: surrounded by a phalanx of aides and, later, Secret Service agents, driven through cities like Chicago in a motorcade.

Being the spouse of the nominee, rather than that of the running mate, comes with new scrutiny. Mr. Emhoff was forced this month to acknowledge that he had been involved in an extramarital affair in his first marriage, long before he met Ms. Harris.

“Sometimes I try to put myself into his shoes,” Mr. Brokaw said. “He went on a blind date in 2013 and 10 years later he’s flying around the world representing the country on a global stage. It’s like, ‘how the hell did this happen?’”

Should Ms. Harris win, he would be the first male occupant of a position for which there is no official job description or salary. Previous holders of the job did it with differing aspirations and ambitions. As first lady, Nancy Reagan embraced a war on drugs, while Hillary Clinton led an unsuccessful effort for a national health care overhaul. Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis made a crusade for historical preservation of the White House. Melania Trump’s “Be Best” campaign addressed young people’s social and emotional health.

“There is an outside view that all they do is host state dinners and holiday parties and that is what their role is,” said Jeremy Bernard, who was the social secretary for Barack and Michelle Obama. “They certainly have a role in that. But that really, honestly, is just a minor role.”

By focusing on antisemitism, Mr. Emhoff is engaging one of the most contentious issues facing the Biden White House: Israel and the war on Gaza. Mr. Emhoff, who declined a request for an interview, has avoided discussing the administration’s policies toward Israel and Gaza, calling them policy questions and deferring to his wife.

Mr. Emhoff does not raise the issue of antisemitism at all of his stops. A few weeks ago, when he spoke at a fund-raiser of mostly gay men at Fire Island Pines in New York, he instead used the moment to go after Mr. Trump and his running mate, Senator JD Vance of Ohio. “Now we’ve got to push back on that despicable person and his little sidekick,” he said.

But associates said Mr. Emhoff, in talking about the significance of his role as Ms. Harris’s spouse, repeatedly returns to his Judaism. “His Jewish identity is part of who he is,” said Deborah Lipstadt , whom Mr. Biden appointed as the special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism. “When I first met him, he said to me, ‘I thought the novelty of who I was is that I was the first male in this position. But it’s that I’m the first Jew.’”

“He grabbed onto this,” she said.

As he traveled through Chicago, Mr. Emhoff talked of adhering to the Jewish tradition of posting a mezuza, a case containing a parchment inscribed with a section from the Torah, on doorways in the vice president’s residence, and of holding the first Seder there to mark the Jewish holiday of Passover.

“He’s like a Jewish rock star,” said Halie Soifer, the head of the Jewish Democratic Council of America who was a national security adviser to Ms. Harris when she was in the Senate. “It’s not just the symbolism of him being the first Jewish spouse, but also what he represents and his powerful message: live proudly and openly as a Jew.”

Mr. Emhoff told audiences in Chicago that he had decided to embrace this cause at his wife’s prodding. Ms. Harris was elected at a time, he noted, when antisemitism was on the rise, evidenced by the white supremacists marching in Charlottesville in 2017 — chanting “Jews will not replace us” — and the killing of 11 worshipers attending services the following year at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh.

“I was an entertainment lawyer from L.A.,” he said at the fund-raiser. “I had no idea what I was supposed to do. She said, ‘you have this microphone. You have an obligation to use it to speak for the millions of people who are not here.’ She really, from Day 1, well before Oct. 7, pushed me to do this work.”

But he said that as somber as the task could be, reaffirming his faith — “I’m just as Jewish as the orthodox rabbi,” he said — had lifted his spirits during what has been a difficult period for many Jewish Americans.

“ That is the way I want to feel as a Jewish person in this country,” he said. “Even in the face of this crisis of antisemitism that we know is happening. We still can’t lose that joy, that happiness, that thing that makes us all Jewish.”

Michael Gold contributed reporting from Fire Island Pines, N.Y.

Taylor Robinson

How to watch the Democratic convention.

The Democratic National Convention is underway in Chicago, about a month after Republicans held their convention in Milwaukee . Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, Vice President Kamala Harris’s running mate, will headline Wednesday night’s programming. The convention runs through Thursday, when Ms. Harris is expected to take the stage during prime time.

Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama delivered the closing speeches on Tuesday, while President Biden had the spotlight on Monday .

Here’s how to watch it (all times are Eastern):

How to stream the D.N.C.

The New York Times will stream the convention speeches during prime time, accompanied by live commentary and analysis from our reporters.

The D.N.C. said it would stream the events nightly on its website and also share vertical video on YouTube, TikTok and Instagram. It will offer streaming on horizontal platforms, too, including Facebook, Twitch, X and Amazon Prime Video.

C-SPAN will be livestreaming through Thursday on C-SPAN.org and on the C-SPAN Now mobile app.

PBS will stream gavel-to-gavel coverage of the speeches on its digital and social platforms.

CBS ’s streaming platform, CBS News 24/7, will begin streaming prime-time coverage of the convention at 8 p.m. each night.

NBC News will stream the convention on its streaming platform, NBC News Now, as part of its “Decision 2024” broadcast with Lester Holt and Savannah Guthrie. Coverage will run from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. the first two nights, and from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. the last two nights.

ABC News will carry prime-time coverage of the convention from 7 p.m. to midnight via its streaming platform, ABC News Live.

CNBC will livestream each night’s speeches in prime time on CNBC.com.

MSNBC will livestream all four days of the convention on its YouTube channel.

Fox News will stream each night’s speeches in full on its subscription streaming platform, Fox Nation.

Telemundo will carry complete speeches from key speakers during prime time on its streaming platform, Noticias Telemundo Ahora, through Wednesday.

How to watch the D.N.C. on television.

C-SPAN will broadcast all four days of the convention uninterrupted, as it has done at every convention since 1984.

PBS will run its convention coverage from 8 p.m. to 11 p.m. each night, anchored by Amna Nawaz and Geoff Bennett of “PBS NewsHour.”

CBS Television Network will broadcast prime-time coverage of the convention from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. the last two nights, hosted by Norah O’Donnell.

NBC News will broadcast its “Decision 2024” programming during the same hours as its livestream — from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. the first two nights of the convention, and from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. the final two nights.

ABC News will run prime-time coverage, anchored by David Muir, from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m. the first two nights of the convention, and from 9 p.m. to 11 p.m. the last two nights.

Fox News will have a prime-time slot each night from 10 p.m. to 11 p.m., hosted by Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum. The Fox Business Network will broadcast each night’s speeches in full.

CNN will run commentary and coverage of the convention each night from 8 p.m. to midnight, with the anchors Jake Tapper and Anderson Cooper.

MSNBC will broadcast special team coverage from 7:30 to midnight each night, led by Rachel Maddow.

NewsNation will show its prime-time broadcast, “Decision Desk 2024,” each night from 8 p.m. to midnight. It will be anchored by Chris Cuomo, Elizabeth Vargas and Leland Vittert.

Scripps News will air “Path to the White House,” its prime-time broadcast, every night of the convention starting at 8 p.m. Del Walters will host.

Telemundo will broadcast Spanish-language coverage of the convention with a prime-time special starting at 9:50 p.m. on Thursday, anchored by Julio Vaqueiro.

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Cesar Chavez Speech Rhetorical Analysis: a Comparison to Dr. King's Followers

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