<p>Political leaders often employ rhetorical strategies to frame their discourse around the urge to take decisive action. This study aims to analyse Biden’s rhetoric in his recent State of the Union Address in 2024, highlighting constructed political narratives and persuasive messages during times of crisis. Employing a mixed-methods research design and using van Dijk’s socio-cognitive framework and Aristotle’s persuasion theory, the study provides a qualitative analysis of Biden’s speech. The study emphasises the discursive communicative appeals and linguistic strategies used to justify and personify Biden’s actions and stances to rally public support. The findings of the analysis reveal Biden’s tendency to use passive voice to magnify the consequences of current crises and threats of his opposition while using modality and pronouns to affirm and amplify unity and the strength of his policies. Semiotically, these lexical and rhetorical choices encode moral, national, and civic duty to strengthen the legitimacy of the speaker’s position, and persuasive appeals, and garner the support of the target audience. Ultimately, the study provides considerable insights into the broader socio-political context surrounding the addressed crisis and presents a tailored framework of persuasive appeals and strategies for crisis discourse.</p>