Rhetorical strategies of crisis legitimation: the construction of victimhood, protection, and leadership in presidential crisis discourse

The study examines how presidential crisis discourse constructs and legitimizes emergency governance during a transboundary health crisis. Focusing on Donald Trump’s March 11, 2020 national COVID-19 address, the study integrates Fairclough’s three-dimensional Critical Discourse Analysis model with Aristotelian rhetorical theory to investigate how rhetorical strategies shape national identity and political legitimacy. The analysis develops the “Victim-Savior” matrix, a relational model consisting of three interconnected positions: the nation as victim of external threats, the government as guardian of public security, and the executive as savior capable of resolving the crisis. The findings demonstrate that the speech constructs crisis legitimacy through coordinated uses of ethos, logos, and pathos, together with pronoun choices, evaluative language, and threat framing. These strategies establish a boundary between an endangered national “we” and external “others,” while presenting executive intervention as a necessary form of protection. The study argues that crisis rhetoric does not simply communicate emergency policies; it shapes interpretations of threats and responsibilities. By integrating rhetorical analysis with CDA, this research contributes to studies of crisis communication by explaining how linguistic choices transform health emergencies into political narratives of protection, authority, and exceptional governance.