Brendan Smialowski/Pool; Alex Wong; Jim Watson/Pool/Getty Images
The sight of a U.S. president announcing the death of a terrorist leader has been a fixture in American politics over the past 11 years.
The words each president uttered and their mannerisms at the podium reveal a lot about the type of leaders former Presidents Barack Obama and Donald Trump attempted to be and in the case of President Joe Biden, attempt to be.
This week, Biden announced that the U.S. had killed al-Qaida leader Ayman al-Zawahiri in Kabul over the weekend.
In 2019, Trump revealed that the U.S. killed ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. And in 2011, Obama shared with the American people that Osama bin Laden, the architect of the 9/11 terrorist attacks on the U.S., was killed.
In the days following Biden’s announcement, edited videos have popped up online comparing the speeches by Biden, Obama and Trump. Though some of the videos are created to put certain leaders in a bad light, analyzing these three speeches is worthwhile, according to historians and rhetoric experts that spoke to NPR.
Taking a deeper look at each speech, their delivery, even down to the words each used, provides a small window into each man, those experts said.
Though starkly different characters, there are similarities worth noting, said Thomas Schwartz, a professor of history, political science, and European studies at Vanderbilt University.
The fact that Obama, Trump and Biden took center stage to announce the execution of another person is “a little bloodthirsty,” Schwartz said.
“But they do recognize that there’s a domestic political gain from taking out terrorist leaders, and they want to claim it,” he added.
Each president in their speech makes special note to say that they directed the military and intelligence officers to act on the intel provided, that they gave the orders, Schwartz said. Each man ultimately wants to assert his leadership on the global stage, he said.
“Underneath it all are presidents trying to justify themselves politically and gain something politically,” Schwartz said. “So I think our comparison on that level is probably justified even if, on stylistic things, it also reminds people what they liked and didn’t like about various presidents.”
Obama’s speech on bin Laden looms large
Read More: Analyzing how 3 U.S. presidents announced the deaths of terrorist leaders : NPR