As I’ve painfully done before, I watched Donald Trump’s State of the Union address so that you didn’t have to. And I hope you didn’t, as you will never get those almost two hours back. It was truly torturous.
If you did, I’m sure you saw what I saw: a delusional, mentally declining man yelling stuff and popping our speakers, claiming everything was great and forcing his GOP subjects to stand and applaud.
I am not going to go through many specifics here because you’ve heard it all before: The golden age, “an economy for the ages,” prices are “coming down.” It was just the same lies. He said tariffs were a winning policy for America. He only briefly addressed the Supreme Court ruling while pushing his new tariffs, and he laughably claimed tariffs would “replace the income tax.” The camera at that point panned to Justice Amy Coney Barrett, who had an “over my dead body” look on her face.
Trump touted himself as a president who’s done an extraordinary job and he cast the Democrats as villains, people who are “crazy,” angrily pointing at them as members of his Cabinet and many Republicans in the room stood and applauded.
The speech also had its vicious racism and violence portion, attacking Somalis and celebrating mass deportations by his masked thugs of ICE. And there was the assault on transgender children and their families — that’s when Trump called Democrats “crazy” for actually standing by kids.
Trump focused on pre-planned narratives of people in the audience and used their stories, including the now-disgraced US Olympic men’s ice hockey team — though I was glad to see that five members of the team did not attend or go for a visit to the White House before.
And there was so much more — so, so, so much more — as this was the longest State of the Union in memory. When Trump speaks longer, it’ a sign that deep down he believes he’s in big trouble. He thinks that if he just says stuff over and over and dominates an audience’s time, he’ll convince people. A true narcissist.
But the bottom line: We could not have asked for anything better. Trump doubled down on every horrible, unpopular thing he has done. He claimed this terrible mess of an economy is wonderful and celebrated the violence and racism he’s brought us. He lied and lied.
And the entire GOP cheered him on. They can’t break from it, either deep in the cult or too afraid. And it will likely take them down in November.
Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia gave one of the best rebuttals from the opposition party I’ve seen. She was concise yet very specific and had substance, gravity, and urgency.
She took apart Trump’s claims and focused on the wreckage: the attacks on our democracy and the killing of Americans in the streets. She highlighted Democratic wins — including her landslide win last November — and the Democratic enthusiasm. It was serious yet also upbeat and pitch perfect as she stood before an audience that applauded her at times. This was a far cry from Katie Britt in her kitchen — remember that?! — and a sweating, water-guzzling Marco Rubio. There will be no SNL skit — except about Trump.
Even though Trump’s speech, like that of most presidents, was watched by a higher percentage of people from his own party, CNN’s poll of viewers showed it to be the least popular SOTU this century, with only 38 percent of viewers calling it “very positive.” That’s Trump tanking with his own base. Per CNN political director David Chalian, “The polling universe [of those who watched the speech] is about 13 points more Republican than the overall population.”
The GOP is now trapped, frozen until November, as Trump has decided what the message is: Voters are wrong about what they’re feeling, and I’m right about what I’m saying. That’s a recipe for disaster.
- Michelangelo Signorile writes The Signorile Report, a free and reader-supported Substack. If you’ve valued reading The Signorile Report, consider becoming a paid subscriber and supporting independent, ad-free opinion journalism.
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