President Donald Trump on Tuesday night delivered what was effectively not one, but two State of the Union addresses.
In one, he tried to paint a new reality for the majority of Americans who, according to polls, say they are dissatisfied with what he has done in the first year of his second presidency.
Trump’s disapproval rating stood at 60 percent in a new Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, the highest it has been since shortly after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol by a mob of his supporters. Because midterm elections are almost always a referendum on a president’s performance, that number is daunting for the Republicans who hold control of both houses of Congress — the House by a razor-thin margin.
“Our nation is back — bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before,” Trump said at the outset of a speech that stretched past one hour and 45 minutes, breaking the record for the longest presidential address to a joint session of Congress that Trump himself set last year. He hailed the first year of his second presidency as “the golden age of America” and “a turnaround for the ages.”
With his showman’s theatricality, Trump then orchestrated a parade of heroes.
The gold-medal-winning U.S. men’s hockey team streamed into the gallery. He awarded Coast Guard rescue officer Scott Ruskan with the military’s prestigious Legion of Merit for having brought 165 people to safety during last year’s floods in Central Texas. He cited the World War II heroism of 99-year-old George “Buddy” Taggart, who beamed from the gallery. Andrew Wolfe, one of two National Guard members shot in downtown D.C. shortly before Thanksgiving, received a Purple Heart, and first lady Melania Trump put a Medal of Honor around the neck of Royce Williams, a retired Navy captain, for his actions during a 1952 Korean War mission in which he downed four Soviet MiG-15 jets.
But as Trump pivoted to issues such as immigration, gender and election security, he made hairpin rhetorical turns from gilding his own achievements to vilifying the Democratic side of the House Chamber, where many seats were empty.
“You should be ashamed of yourself,” he chastised, when the opposition party sat silently as he called for them to stand up if they believe the government’s first duty is to “protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Trump called the Democrats “sick people,” and said of them: “I’m telling ya, they’re crazy. Boy, oh boy, we’re lucky we have a country with people like this — Democrats are destroying our country, but we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time.”
Despite efforts by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) to discourage it, there was sporadic heckling from Democrats throughout the address. Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was escorted from the chamber for holding a sign that read, “Black people aren’t apes,” referring to a racist video that Trump posted this month that featured images of Barack and Michelle Obama portrayed as apes. Green was ejected from Trump’s speech last year for shaking his cane and yelling, “You don’t have a mandate.”
Unsurprisingly, Trump also leveled criticism at the U.S. Supreme Court for what he said was a “very unfortunate ruling” last week that struck down most of the tariffs that have been his preferred instrument of economic and foreign policy. Of the four justices present, three were among the six who ruled that Trump had overstepped his authority. All four sat silently as he rebuked the high court.
Trump tends to defy tradition with his speeches, and he did so again Tuesday — dispensing with the typical list of policy goals, or even a broad outline of what he wishes to accomplish for the American people. The handful of proposals he offered, involving data centers, congressional stock trading rules and curbs on corporations buying private homes, may end up being popular. But they are unlikely to serve as directional guideposts that many Republicans had hoped would become an electoral agenda.
On the looming question of threatened military action against Iran, he continued to make the case for it but provided little clarity on precisely what the objectives would be.
Trump once again dismissed the public’s concern about high prices, which is considered a central issue in this year’s midterm elections. He suggested that “affordability” is no more than a slogan confected by Democrats — or, as he put it, “a word. They just used it. Somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure.”
“They knew their statements were a lie. They knew it,” he continued. “They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well.”
However, that is not the view widely shared. In the Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll, about 48 percent of Americans, compared with 29 percent, said the economy has gotten worse — not better — since Trump’s inauguration.
While the U.S. Constitution stipulates that the president “shall from time to time” report to Congress on the state of the union, these speeches are rarely memorable. Even the most effective of them tend to nudge the president’s poll numbers only slightly and temporarily. Especially in recent years, the words of the speech are often subsumed into the dramatics in the House chamber.
All of which means that while it is not yet known whether Americans are favorably or unfavorably impressed by what Trump had to say on Tuesday, it is unlikely to affect a midterm trajectory that has Republicans deeply worried.
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