Donald Trump's Rhetorical Analysis

Recently, many people have fallen victim to the newest president’s rhetoric. One of the main reasons behind many Americans voting for Donald Trump was because he promised to repeal and replace The Affordable Care Act (ACA) with something better. Now that he has been elected president, his party has ironically introduced a plan similar to the ACA, but instead of providing more affordable healthcare to the majority of the population (low to mid-income people), it cuts taxes for the minority of the population (high-income people) and reduces the affordability of healthcare, effectively creating a worse version of the original. This goes against Donald Trump’s promise of “insurance for everybody”. The Bay Area News Group newspaper and the Huffington

Post website both reported on the new Republican party’s American Health Care Act (AHCA). They covered similar topics, but the newspaper had more biased writing and talks more about the Republican ideology and its flaws while the internet article was more neutral, factual, and focused mostly on the health care plan.
Starting with the magazine article, it attempts to get the attention of the reader at the beginning by giving powerful statements that demonize Republican ideology.

“It’s time to put an end to the myth that Republicans believe in fiscal responsibility. Saving taxpayer dollars takes a back seat to the ideological imperative of blaming and shaming the poor.” In contrast, the internet article begins with a playable video that outlines some Republican politicians having differing opinions on the proposed bill rather than giving their own opinion. Some do not want the ACA repealed, “That’s not acceptable when you have 20 million people [insured by Obamacare]...We’re just not going to pull the rug out from under them.” (John Kasich, Governor of Ohio), some want it replaced, “We will finally put a bill on the president’s desk that defunds Obamacare.” (Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House), and others want it removed entirely, “There’s a lot of Obamacare-lite in their bill.” (Senator Rand Paul). The article also shows a statistical spreadsheet highlighting the difference between the ACA and the AHCA’s way of handling of tax credits. The spreadsheet brings insight to the fact that the AHCA is not looking to benefit the lower-class by giving tax credits to those who are more fortunate. In contrast, the newspaper article lacks any kind of useful image other than Paul Ryan presenting the Republican plan during his press

conference.
One of the biggest differences between these two medias is that the newspaper article suffers from strong amounts of bias against the topic. For example, “It would be one thing if the GOP’s mean-spirited ideology actually saved money, but it doesn’t. Quite the contrary, in fact.”. In contrast, the internet article said something in a more neutral way. “The bill doesn’t say how it would pay for its spending after scrapping the taxes that financed the Affordable Care Act.” The newspaper medium also paints a much more negative image of the ordeal, one example being the author claiming that the proposed idea of removing the penalty fee for not having health insurance so that the private insurance companies can impose their own penalty fees to be akin to an act of “extortion”. The internet article is slightly more positive in this instance and is more specific. “Insurers could charge higher premiums to people who did not maintain “continuous coverage” ― a lapse of more than 63 days ― 30 percent more for their policies when they sign up again.”
The Huffington Post, with its more complex approach, lists six major key features of the new healthcare plan along with elaborating upon each of them.

It states that the American Health Care Act would change who gets financial assistance and how much, raise premiums for older people, end the no-healthcare penalty fee and replace it with something similar, roll back Medicaid expansion, dramatically change funding for Medicaid, and end Obamacare taxes. For each feature, the article mentions at least one detrimental consequence that results from it. In the Bay Area News newspaper, it summarizes the more important points and omits other ones, perhaps because the author does not need anything else to convince the reader. Afterward, most of the article contains the author’s voice in the matter. For example, it mentions the new plan’s proposal of taking away the subsidies of the old healthcare plan and replacing it with refundable tax credits based on age. The author then interprets the intent of this proposal, stating that the new healthcare plan would give government assistance to those who do not need it as much instead of giving it to those who need it most. The only other reference to the specifics of the AHCA is the penalty fee

change.
It is fairly obvious that these two sources give radically different information when comparing their complexity, objectivity, and attention-getting techniques. The magazine article has intentions that go beyond the news event and instead gears more toward having a discussion of the event rather than explaining the details. The internet article remained unbiased and made sure that the reader was enriched with information.