From Words to War: A Text Analysis of Trump’s Week in Three Speeches
On Tuesday night February 24, President Trump stood before Congress and said “great” 41 times to describe his policies and the state of the country. Over the course of the following five days, the president’s language in his official speeches changed in significant ways. An analysis of three official speeches – his State of the Union address on February 24, a middle-of-the-night announcement of military action on February 28, and a wartime update days later – shows the president rapidly shifting the framework of the country’s priorities.
The State of the Union wove through the president’s grievances with Democrats, his legislative agenda, and a long list of accomplishments he claimed to have secured for the country. It was in many ways a typical Trump performance, complete with surprise guests, self-congratulations, and an overwhelming focus on domestic politics. Notably, despite a weeks-long buildup of U.S. military forces in the region, Iran merited only three mentions across the speech’s 10,600 words – a passing topic in an evening otherwise devoted to the economy, immigration, and attacks on his opposition.
Four days later, at 2:30 a.m. February 28, Trump posted a video to Truth Social. Wearing a white USA baseball hat and staring straight into the camera, he announced that the United States military had begun a major combat operation in Iran. By Sunday, U.S.-Israeli joint forces had killed Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and hundreds of Iranian civilians. Iran had sent retaliatory missile and drone attacks towards U.S. bases across the region killing six Army Reserve soldiers and the president warned that more U.S. troops would likely die before the war was over.
The language Trump used before Congress was radically different from the words he used as a wartime president on Saturday and Sunday.
An analysis of Trump’s words across three speeches in five days, shows the president pivoting from peacetime boasting to wartime rhetoric almost overnight, and possibly suggests where we are heading next.
State of the Union
The State of the Union is an annual, constitutionally mandated address given by the President to Congress regarding the nation’s condition. President Trump’s speech was similar in many ways to past presidents. The most commonly used theme words: “people,” “country,” “American,” “great,” are the kind of broad, patriotic language that is expected from the State of the Union. For Trump, this was a speech aimed at projecting national strength and pride – he used “great” 47 times and “American” and “Americans” combined for over 60 mentions. For nearly two hours, the president was conveying one message: things are going great.
But a closer look at the President’s words reveal some themes that are more specific to his presidency. “Military” is prominent, reflecting not just the usual salutes to service members but narrating the Venezuela raid in cinematic detail. “War” appears, but modestly — largely in the context of wars Trump claimed to have ended, not wars he was about to start.
“Iran,” already a major topic, only appears three times out of his 10,600 word speech. About 90 minutes into the speech, he devoted a few minutes to warning the Iranian regime and referencing last June’s “Operation Midnight Hammer.” He ended this brief Iran section with an ominous warning: “But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.”
Overall, an analysis of his speech captures a president performing normalcy. The economy, immigration, partisan jabs at Democrats, crime, the hockey team, the 250th anniversary — these were the priorities of Tuesday night. By Saturday, the vocabulary would tell a different story.
“This is the moment for action. Do not let it pass.”
The chart above compares relative word frequency from the SOTU address on Tuesday, February 24, Trump’s war declaration that Saturday and his first update on “Operation Epic Fury” the following day, Sunday, March 1.
The latter two speeches that Trump gave were dedicated to U.S. foreign policy and left little room for the topics he has spent much of his time in office talking about. “Border” — a word that appears 16 times throughout the State of the Union, drops to zero in both the Saturday and Sunday speeches. The same is true for “tax,” “inflation,” “prices,” and the rest of the themes that defined the speech to Congress.
In contrast, we can see a major surge in war-related vocabulary. By Saturday, the word “nuclear” is one of the most frequently repeated words. “Death” follows a similar trajectory: nearly absent on Tuesday, then spiking sharply in the war speeches as Trump discusses the killing of Khamenei, threatens “certain death” to Iranian forces who don’t surrender, and acknowledges the deaths of American service members. “Iranian” makes the same leap, from a word that essentially doesn’t appear in the State of the Union to a term that defines his speeches both Saturday and Sunday.
Still, some themes have been consistent. These don’t say as much about the content of his speeches as they do about Trump’s bottom line message: we are doing the right thing. The words “strong” and “strength” appear multiple times in all three speeches. “American” remains high in the latter two speeches, reflecting his commitment to framing all of his messaging nationalist terms, whether talking about tax cuts or airstrikes.
Where we are going
While a word cloud cannot tell us why the president decided to start the war on February 28, it can show us something that is easy to miss in the blur of a news cycle this fast: just how completely the frame shifted. In five days, the president of the United States went from a speech where “great” was one of the most frequently used words to one where “death” was. From a speech where “border” appeared 16 times to speeches where it appeared zero. From a 108-minute marathon about tax cuts, hockey teams, and prescription drug prices to a six-minute video warning that American soldiers would die.
The State of the Union speech, which felt like the defining political event of the week on Tuesday night, was a footnote by Saturday. The debates it was supposed to spark — about affordability, immigration, the midterms — have been overtaken entirely.
The post From Words to War: A Text Analysis of Trump’s Week in Three Speeches first appeared on Storybench.