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silveradeptThe Constitutional requirement for the President of the United States is that "from time to time" he shall "give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient[.]" This has become, by custom, a yearly address, with the intention of setting agendas and celebrating victories of the previous year by the President and his legislative allies.
Given who's in the White House right now, I expected self-aggrandizement, I expected deeply partisan commentary, and I expected Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics that would be deployed in service of the other two. I expected the current administrator to be more in his element, since he didn't have to make policy pronouncements or answer difficult questions or any of the other things that generally take him away from the things he likes to do and make him work in our reality.
That it appeared to be more of a session much like the Prime Minister's Questions, rather than a speech on the state of the Union, I probably should have expected, but did not. I suspect many of the things said during the speech would probably have gotten someone censured in Hansard or any other such record of governmental procedure, as the deeply partisan part was very much something that he wanted to make a point of.
Running on the Associated Press transcript of the speech itself, let us dive in and see what horrors lie on the surface and below it. Not in the transcript are the several times in the speech where there are either chants of "U-S-A!" or Members of Congress attempting to fact-check the administrator or call him out on his falsehoods (or chants trying to drown out those checks and callouts) or the applause that followed some lines.
(Why do this, you might ask? Some of it is because the record needs to be set correctly. Some of it is spite and malice against someone who is unqualified and ineligible to hold the office he is currently caretaking. And some of it is because I've been doing this for a while, and I'm not letting this joker put me off it, not when I'll have plenty of low-hanging lies to point out.)
He believes that his accomplishments have been in economic recovery, dropping inflation levels, convincing more people to be given weapons of death and told to use them abroad (or on people in the country), in lowering the crime rate, and in bringing peace and stability to the world around. Let's see how his claims stack up, shall we?
As for the other claims, regarding fentanyl, specific numbers are difficult to when you're talking about illegal markets, and also, the what specifically is meant isn't clear, and also, you'd also have to give credit to his predecessor, which he very much would not do. And the murder rate, well, It's also been on downward trends from before the current administrator took office, so the big drops that he's touting as all his have precedent, and he may be the beneficiary of all kinds of trends that have been going on long before he came into office. Either time.
The deeply partisan affairs start early on in this speech and keep going, where the administrator takes everyone he sees as an opponent to task and as at fault for problems that he himself (and sometimes, his Congressional allies) have all fixed.
Commentary about mortgage prices and stock market gains are spun as things that benefit everyone, but a lot of people don't have generational wealth or other money to take advantage of either, and stocks and mortgages already favor the rich, so saying that we're all winning and providing evidence that only the richest are is not very convincing.
To refer to Venezuela, a country that the United States has been specifically attacking and engaging in potential war crimes against because the U.S. wants the oil reserves of Venezuela without having to support the government therefor, as a "new friend and partner" should taste very sour for anyone who believed the opening salvo of this speech about this administrator being about resolving wars and chaos.
"Ended DEI?" Hardly. They have just tried to restructure privileges to be given to white men instead of people traditionally oppressed and pushed out of jobs by privileged white men, and tried to punish anyone who wanted a properly diverse workforce. Considering they like to use "DEI hire" to refer to anyone not a white man and imply they received a position because they're lesser and took it away from a more qualified white man, it's not hard to see that they're saying "We got rid of things that make better-qualified people part of the workforce, instead of defaulting to whatever mediocre white man is available."
2.4 million people off Supplemental Nutrition? You mean the program that will have $186 billion removed from its budget thanks to your signature legislative piece? To say those people were "lifted" off of assistance, like they should have been ashamed to stay alive and fed, is typical spin from the party that believes all welfare should go to those who already have more than enough.
As we get into the portion of the speech that is supposed to highlight the ordinary citizen, extraordinary actions, and help show how the administration's legislative priorities will assist them, the administrator starts with the United States men's hockey team, fresh off a gold medal performance in the Olympic Winter Games, along with the presentation of a Presidential Medal of Freedom to the goaltender of the squad.
(Shame, USA Hockey. Both the men's and the women's team should be lauded for their accomplishments, but appearing anywhere near this administrator gives him legitimacy he hasn't earned. At best, you can think of it as something more like the dignity of the office recognizing you, rather than this specific administrator.)
Much more appropriately for the office, the administrator then recognizes a wounded veteran of the Second World War, who will be a centenarian on July 4 of this year. A tie-in to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And also, a Coast Guard Petty Officer who performed several lifesaving rescues against floodwaters raging through a summer camp, who is to be awarded the Legion of Merit for his heroism in doing his duty.
The tie-in to the single legislative accomplishment of this administration is someone who will receive a whole $5,000 of extra income this year due to the lack of tax on tips and overtime. The administrator admonished the Democrats for not passing his tax breaks, claiming they "wanted large-scale tax increases to hurt the people, instead." From that same bill, the top 10 percent get three times as much as the highlighted person's benefit, and the top 1 percent get ten times as much benefit in tax breaks as the highlighted person does, so tell me again who "the people" are that supposedly were getting harmed by not passing a bill that was full of giveaways to those who already have an excess? And also that contained significant cuts to assistance that people like the featured person might have as a way of making ends meet?
Supposedly, alongside this economic windfall represented mostly in the Dow Jones Industrial Average continuing to climb in points, there's a new initiative where the Treasury Department will allocate $1,000 per child born from 2025 to 2028, with the funds automatically invested in the stock market and ready for withdrawal at age 18 at the minimum for said child, with the opportunity for grown-ups to contribute more to such an account, and for certain uses of the money to allow for tax-free withdrawal. Which sounds an awful lot like a slightly less strict version of the Qualified Tuition Plan, known more commonly as a 529 plan. which has been in existence since 1996. The biggest difference, of course, being that people contribute to a 529 plan and the states generally run them, rather than having money pulled directly out of the U.S. Treasury to be invested in the private stock market for the benefit of corporations. Of course, the announcement of this plan suggests that philanthropists are doing most of the funding of these $1,000 windfalls for children invested in the private stock market. I have to say, whomever came up with this idea had a pretty smart thought about how to get government dollars into the private market to play with, while making it look like this wasn't a massive giveaway because theoretically, the kids can cash out as early as 18.
Why do I say "whomever came up with this?" Because either the administrator or the speechwriter demonstrated in front of us that they do not understand economics, and especially not economics related to import duties, in the slightest.
Which is why he then throws a hissy fit about the Court that has otherwise allowed him to do whatever he wanted telling him that this time, they won't let him.
Not for the mobster mentality thing, that we already knew, not even for the "oh, I don't need Congressional approval for this," because we already also knew that, but that he thinks he can effectively repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and usher in an age of prosperity through the levying of duties on the population of the country. Because that has worked spectacularly well in the past history of the United States. [heavy sarcasm intended.] Along with, of course, his continued wrongheaded belief that the countries whose goods are hit with the duties as they are imported will be the ones paying said duties, instead of the importers.
Also, you'll notice the theme running through so far that everyone who opposes him or rightly says that his ideas won't work or are harmful is wrong. 22 Nobel economists were wrong that his tariff plan would hurt the United States, because the stock market is still going strong. The Democrats are always wrong, and not mistaken-wrong, but willfully hurtful wrong, who are out to cause pain and suffering through malice instead of ignorance. Even the Supreme Court is wrong, because it told him he couldn't do something, and he's the chief executive, therefore everything he does must always be right. You can see more of this insistence that it has to be malice rather than any other reason when he blames Democrats for inflation and high prices.
This shows up in his framing of the Affordable Care Act, and his supposed replacement for it that is direct cash payments to people and negotiated prescription drug costs for consumers, rather than subsidies for health insurance.
The plan, as given in this high-level detail here, has one very specific flaw in it: who, exactly, are these newly-enriched and freed health care purchasers going to get their insurance plans from, again? Is there some new player that's being introduced here that will drive the costs of insurance and care down because they'll be able to offer the same or better levels of coverage for lower cost? Has this government decided they are now in the business of selling health care plans to everyone? What incentive, exactly, is there for the companies to drive costs down, instead of setting their prices so that all of that government subsidy to the people isn't immediately sucked back up by these companies, for no improvements in services or costs. If he were interested in doing it this way, he'd announce that he's going to use anti-trust and anti-cartel powers in the government to force insurance monopolies and conglomerates to break up and actually compete with each other, instead of being the province of oligopolists. Or have the Congress introduce legislation declaring that the government will be the sole payer for any and all health insurance and/or prescription drugs, ending the tyranny of insurance companies and their arbitrary policies and rates once and for all. Like most countries with socialized medicine have done. He could get the Republicans to do a lot of things that would be real changes to the industry and would benefit ordinary people greatly, but would impoverish those who have grown very wealthy feeding on a captive populace.
And the supposed savings are coupon cards or prices obtained by ordering directly through a manufacturer website, rather than any kind of negotiation with companies where the government uses its leverage as a buyer and provider of such things to encourage companies to accept the price being offered, which will still net them plenty of profit, rather than charging outsized prices and in turn causing inflation of insurance costs for the consumer to pay, and that's assuming the insurance covers the thing enough for someone to still make their co-pays on the drugs themselves. And it mostly only works for people who are paying cash, so, again, where exactly is the savings and all that money that's supposedly being freed up and returned to the consumer going? This is gilded, meant to make someone think that they're getting something shiny and valuable, when all you have to do is scratch the surface to see that the biggest expense made on the thing was enough gold leaf to convince you, the sucker, that you were getting a good deal.
With regard to data centers and their power needs, the administrator proposes allowing data center companies to build and maintain their own power plants. Three Mile Island would like a word. Fukushima would like one, too, and so would all of the other disasters around unsafe power plants, improperly sealed waste, and all the other things that a company that is looking to run a power generation plant as cheaply as possible, and likely with as little regulatory oversight as possible, are going to be extremely prone to. Do you really trust companies that are coming up with stochastic parrots to be able to build and run an entire power plant according to safe specifications?
Introducing the next featured person, who has a plight of having put in multiple offers to buy a home and having companies with rental portfolios swoop in and offer better offers in cash, sight unseen, the administrator says he wants to ban "large Wall Street firms" from owning properties like that. That's actually good policy. I'd say the right thing to do would be to make it a ban on anyone owning a property where they primarily use it for rental income instead of a residence or doing business in it. If we think landlordism is a blight when corporations do it, then we should also think of it as a blight when people do it as well.
The next gilt gift to the people is that workers are going to get access to the same type of retirement plans offered to federal workers (good), with an entire $1,000 per year of matching contributions from the government to help grow their retirement accounts. That's not nearly enough to build a real retirement account with matching contributions, much like how the $1,000 accounts for children isn't actually enough to build into educational costs or home-buying costs, or business start-up costs. The assumption here is that the stock market can only ever go up, and at paces that will mean that paltry sum will make you a multi-millionaire by the time you hit retirement age. And that assumes, of course, that someone can find that amount of money to get the matching amount in the first place, which, in the kinds of places where there aren't matching employer-matching retirement accounts of wages that pay enough, is going to be hard enough. That's why we still have Social Security, after all.
From there, the administrator swings back into anti-immigrant mode, with a specific slander that he's repeated before, about the Somali immigrant community of Minnesota. This particular slander is one that he's deployed because he has a personal distaste for Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and during his slander of the people of Minnesota, the audio clearly picks up someone trying to tell him off about it, before the Republicans applaud lines and chant "U-S-A!" to drown out what's being said. There are a lot of people in that chamber disqualifying themselves as moral and ethical human beings, much less as people with the fortitude and intellect to work as representatives of the people. He also implies that other liberal states with high immigrant populations are also allowing the "American taxpayer" to be hurt through the actions of their immigrant populations.
It's also funny that he blames immigrant communities, saying they "remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception.", when he's not above taking a bribe of his own, even if he claims it's for his presidential library, and neither are his Cabinet secretaries or subordinates. "Every accusation is a confession," is one of those things that gets said about him a lot, and it's usually true.
Staying in the theme of slandering immigrants and immigrant communities, the next two people name-checked are a child who was a victim of a terrible accident involving a commercial vehicle striking a parked car at speed, and a victim of a killing. The narrative is that the fault is with the president who "let" the immigrants in with "open borders," then compounded by the state of California issuing a commercial driver's license to the operator of the vehicle that struck the car, or that the "sanctuary cities" are "deadly". And that the Democratic party is very happy with crime and corruption happening in the country, of course, because he wants to portray the Democratic party as immoral and evil.
Throughout, of course, the administrator continues to portray immigration primarily as people with criminal intention in mind, reports and statistics about how immigrants commit less crimes than citizens and are usually victimized more be damned.
And, of course, in asking for the legislators to stand in agreement with him about the supposed purpose of the government, he really should brush up on a very old document.
Clearly, some of the members of Congress have read their Constitutions, or recall them better, or are otherwise interested in ensuring all of the things in the Preamble come to pass, because the would-be-strongman chides them for not agreeing with him, when the correct thing to do would have been for the entire gallery to stay seated.
To throw more red meat to the base, the next person featured is a child who socially transitioned at school, then was not in secure housing, had a judge try to ensure that the home environment would be accepting, and eventually either detransitioned, or, equally as likely, was forced back into the closet and now has to present as a woman. Since there's a scholarship to Liberty University mentioned, a place that is religious to the core and that would not tolerate any form of gender variance, I strongly suspect that if there are still genderfeels happening, they're being suppressed until this person can get into a more stable and better-protected environment, where the government and family won't be able to hurt or pressure this person for making a true decision. Since this is an indeterminate situation, I've scrubbed the pronouns and the name of the person from the transcript, because I wouldn't want to deadname the person or use improper pronouns.
Another "Democrats are destroying the country" line. I'm sure scholars who analyze these speeches are putting this one in a category of "highly partisan and aggressive" compared to the speeches of predecessors and others. There's always a certain amount of "stop obstructing my agenda" in the speech, but the last administrator was much more about "calling in," asking for cooperation and negotiation and for the wheels of government to work, rather than trying to portray his opponents as irredeemably evil. Even if some of us were hoping he'd do just that, based on what they were doing, or preventing from happening, and have been doing for the last several decades.
The summary of the person's situation has been tailored to the administrator's message, of course, but reading it strikes me as "student wants to socially transition, has a home life that will not accept this, is trying it at school, with requests that it not come back to the home life, because of fear of consequences. Transition leaks back to home life, parents throw child out of house, student now has to try and find a living situation with no parental support, eventually is found as a runaway, and the court understands that returning the child to the parents is not a good idea, if the home environment will continue to be hostile to the student. Court probably decides, though, that all the other options are worse, tells the student to suck it up and pretend, and the student is dutifully doing so until such time as the student can establish an independent and functional household, and then will go no-contact with the parents and try transition again, to see whether it's truly correct for the student or not."
The hardest part about this situation is that for the people who are the most vociferously opposed to transition, the easiest way to get the desired result is to let the child experiment and come to their own conclusion about it. We know from research that children have a strong idea of their gender identity at a very young age, but it's usually the onset of biological puberty that brings that question to the fore. Many children decide that, no, they do have a firm gender identity, and it's cisgender, but they have some presentation tweaks they'd like to enact, and they'll be happy. The ones who are trans want to have the easiest time being the correct gender, and that usually means trying to arrest the puberty that will come to them and instead go on the pathway of the puberty that matches their gender. But it is apparently an extremely hard thing to accept that children are independent beings with their own self-identities, rather than extensions of their parents, to be controlled like any other piece of property.
(And if the state were rip[ping children from their parents' arms and forcing them to transition their gender, you can bet your ass the Democrats would be up in arms about it. Oh, wait, they are, because the states where that is happening are all states that refuse to allow any kind of gender-affirming care to minors, or who are passing legislation to ban the existence of trans people in public and private spaces. And who are ready to so the same thing to gay people, women, and black and brown people as soon as they think they can get away with it.)
So we've covered the Republican bases at this point - trans people, brown and black people, uppity women, and populist appeals that are in front of massive benefits to the richest. What's left?
Ah, yes, a mention of Charlie Kirk's killing (a man who sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind), and a woman killed by a man who had been released on his own recognizance, despite a lengthy arrest record. (With the implication that the arrest record was for violent crime, rather than, say, a dozen citations for being a Black man in a racist society.) And military members attacked by others (always of foreign origins, we note, and always people who he thinks are insane or otherwise sociopathic). Which leads to large claims about having stopped wars in other countries through his presence and the presence of the people in his Cabinet, and through military might like attacking Iran over having nuclear capability, like potential war crimes by attacking non-military boats in international waters, claiming they are drug cartel boats, and by engaging in regime change in Venezuela. Peace through strength, valorization of military and police forces. All credit to him, all blame to the opposition. The rest of the speech is giving awards, and talking about military actions, and then finally landing on the boilerplate about the United States being the best country in the world, bar none, the most favored of the Being Represented by the Tetragrammaton, Manifest Destiny, Columbia, and so forth. (The matter about regime change in Venezuela is bookended by a story of a person being reunited after her father was sent to a prison for daring to run as an opposition candidate, and a story of a helicopter pilot landing troops to do the regime change, who was being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his continued duty while wounded.)
There's one last quoted piece to work with here, before he launches into how awesome the military is and how powerful it is and how he's doing great things with it.
And not only that, he took his time doing all of this, breaking his own record for longest State of the Union address, most of which had nothing to do with policy, nothing to do with serious policy, and lots to do with him, or the stories he wanted to tell.
And, as has become tradition, after the administrator gives their address, a designee of the opposition policy provides a rebuttal and a counterpoint speech to the address. The newly-elected Democratic governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, was chosen to give the rebuttal, and chose to do so from the house of the legislature in Virginia. This transcript also does not indicate places where there were applause breaks in the speech, but there were only applause breaks in the speech, rather than chants or trying to drown out people who were likely fact-checking him in real time.
The response chooses to focus on three questions, at least one of which is close to the way that Ronald Reagan phrased his own questions while running for President:
They also know that in the cities, including many of the ones that the administrator claims have had great reductions in crime thanks to his actions, there are still kidnappers and murderers looking for anyone brown, and who are willing to deploy chemical weapons against people protesting their actions, and who are trying to intimidate the citizens that are exercising their right to document the actions of people claiming they are acting in the name of the government.
The rest of the speech is about the people, and the way the people can defeat the bullies, the incompetents, and the people who attack them. Obviously, there's something to be said about how electeds tend to believe that voting cures all ills, but the voting is a part of the method for knocking these fascists back and denying them any kind of legitimacy or any kind of power that they aren't staring at and keeping a hand on to prevent it from slipping away from them.
In a much shorter form, the response speech was more relevant, more important, and more accurate than the speech that preceded it. If the Democratic Party is willing to actually say the message, at the level of crudity and honesty that it requires, with the volume it requires, and with the repetition it requires, they should be able to instill in that part of the country that doesn't want open authoritarian and fascist government the necessary will to punch Nazis in the face, as many times as it takes to get them to go away, in as many ways as they present their face to be punched.
If we want to say the state of the union is strong, then fisticuffs, metaphorical and possibly physical, are in the cards for everyone. If we're feeling generous, Queensbury rules.
Given who's in the White House right now, I expected self-aggrandizement, I expected deeply partisan commentary, and I expected Lies, Damned Lies, and Statistics that would be deployed in service of the other two. I expected the current administrator to be more in his element, since he didn't have to make policy pronouncements or answer difficult questions or any of the other things that generally take him away from the things he likes to do and make him work in our reality.
That it appeared to be more of a session much like the Prime Minister's Questions, rather than a speech on the state of the Union, I probably should have expected, but did not. I suspect many of the things said during the speech would probably have gotten someone censured in Hansard or any other such record of governmental procedure, as the deeply partisan part was very much something that he wanted to make a point of.
Running on the Associated Press transcript of the speech itself, let us dive in and see what horrors lie on the surface and below it. Not in the transcript are the several times in the speech where there are either chants of "U-S-A!" or Members of Congress attempting to fact-check the administrator or call him out on his falsehoods (or chants trying to drown out those checks and callouts) or the applause that followed some lines.
(Why do this, you might ask? Some of it is because the record needs to be set correctly. Some of it is spite and malice against someone who is unqualified and ineligible to hold the office he is currently caretaking. And some of it is because I've been doing this for a while, and I'm not letting this joker put me off it, not when I'll have plenty of low-hanging lies to point out.)
Speaker Johnson, Vice President Vance, first lady of the United States, second lady of the United States, members of Congress and my fellow Americans, our nation is back: Bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before.So that gives you a good idea of what he believes was the situation when he was elected to the office for the second time, because not enough states found him constitutionally ineligible for his role in inciting the insurrection on 6 January 2021.
[…]
When I spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy, inflation at record levels, a wide-open border, horrendous recruitment for military and police, rampant crime at home and wars and chaos all over the world. But tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages. It is, indeed, a turnaround for the ages. And we will never go back to where we were just a very short time ago. We’re not going back.
He believes that his accomplishments have been in economic recovery, dropping inflation levels, convincing more people to be given weapons of death and told to use them abroad (or on people in the country), in lowering the crime rate, and in bringing peace and stability to the world around. Let's see how his claims stack up, shall we?
After four years in which millions and millions of illegal aliens poured across our borders totally unfettered and unchecked, we now have the strongest and most secure border in American history, by far. In the past nine months, zero illegal aliens have been admitted to the United States. But we will always allow people to come in legally, people that will love our country and will work hard to maintain our country. Deadly fentanyl across our border is down by a record 56% in one year. In the last year, the murder rate saw its single largest decline in recorded history. This is the biggest decline, think of it, in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years, since 1900.The hardest part about making a zero claim like that is that the presence of even one undocumented migrant or person who crossed the border without proper authorization disproves your claim. And given that the current environment is exceedingly hostile toward people who merely look undocumented, it's unlikely someone who is undocumented is going to stand up and say "I disprove your zero claim!" So it's much more a matter of rhetoric than of factual claim, because if nobody is biting their thumb at him, he believes there's nobody there to bite their thumb at hum.
As for the other claims, regarding fentanyl, specific numbers are difficult to when you're talking about illegal markets, and also, the what specifically is meant isn't clear, and also, you'd also have to give credit to his predecessor, which he very much would not do. And the murder rate, well, It's also been on downward trends from before the current administrator took office, so the big drops that he's touting as all his have precedent, and he may be the beneficiary of all kinds of trends that have been going on long before he came into office. Either time.
The deeply partisan affairs start early on in this speech and keep going, where the administrator takes everyone he sees as an opponent to task and as at fault for problems that he himself (and sometimes, his Congressional allies) have all fixed.
The Biden administration and its allies in Congress gave us the worst inflation in the history of our country. But in 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years. And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7%. Gasoline, which reached a peak of over $6 a gallon in some states under my predecessor and was, quite honestly, a disaster, is now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places $1.99 a gallon. And when I visited the great state of Iowa just a few weeks ago, I even saw $1.85 a gallon for gasoline, the lowest in four years, and falling fast.He's off by a percentage point, at the least, and also, AAA doesn't show a state daily average below $2.30 when I looked at it on 25 February 2026, so it would be nice if he were more specific about where this mythically cheap gasoline was, so that we could ask the people who set those prices how much money they're losing.
Commentary about mortgage prices and stock market gains are spun as things that benefit everyone, but a lot of people don't have generational wealth or other money to take advantage of either, and stocks and mortgages already favor the rich, so saying that we're all winning and providing evidence that only the richest are is not very convincing.
In four long years, the last administration got less than $1 trillion in new investment in the United States. And when I say less, substantially less. In 12 months, I secured commitments for more than $18 trillion pouring in from all over the globe.This is pretty representative of how this administrator wants to pin the blame of everything on his predecessor, or on the previous Democratic-party president before him. And to do so, there's a lot of free-floating figures, without any reference to who says this or what data is being drawn upon, and what's being counted as "investment" here. Many people who are sitting on bad data don't provide cites, because then you can check those cites. Ad this administrator much prefers emotional weight rather than more sober policy wonkiness, because when numbers come into play, he looks a lot less like the dealmaker he wants to be seen as. Those "commitments" are likely wildly inflated compared to the actual numbers that will show up.
To refer to Venezuela, a country that the United States has been specifically attacking and engaging in potential war crimes against because the U.S. wants the oil reserves of Venezuela without having to support the government therefor, as a "new friend and partner" should taste very sour for anyone who believed the opening salvo of this speech about this administrator being about resolving wars and chaos.
More working today, and 100% of all jobs created under my administration have been in the private sector. We ended DEI in America. We cut a record number of job-killing regulations, and in one year we have lifted 2.4 million Americans - a record - off of food stamps.100% claims are also easily disprovable. How many new ICE agents exist now that didn't even a month ago? Those aren't all private sector jobs, unless you want to say that ICE is actually a coalition of private military corporations allowed to operate as federal agents.
"Ended DEI?" Hardly. They have just tried to restructure privileges to be given to white men instead of people traditionally oppressed and pushed out of jobs by privileged white men, and tried to punish anyone who wanted a properly diverse workforce. Considering they like to use "DEI hire" to refer to anyone not a white man and imply they received a position because they're lesser and took it away from a more qualified white man, it's not hard to see that they're saying "We got rid of things that make better-qualified people part of the workforce, instead of defaulting to whatever mediocre white man is available."
2.4 million people off Supplemental Nutrition? You mean the program that will have $186 billion removed from its budget thanks to your signature legislative piece? To say those people were "lifted" off of assistance, like they should have been ashamed to stay alive and fed, is typical spin from the party that believes all welfare should go to those who already have more than enough.
As we get into the portion of the speech that is supposed to highlight the ordinary citizen, extraordinary actions, and help show how the administration's legislative priorities will assist them, the administrator starts with the United States men's hockey team, fresh off a gold medal performance in the Olympic Winter Games, along with the presentation of a Presidential Medal of Freedom to the goaltender of the squad.
(Shame, USA Hockey. Both the men's and the women's team should be lauded for their accomplishments, but appearing anywhere near this administrator gives him legitimacy he hasn't earned. At best, you can think of it as something more like the dignity of the office recognizing you, rather than this specific administrator.)
Much more appropriately for the office, the administrator then recognizes a wounded veteran of the Second World War, who will be a centenarian on July 4 of this year. A tie-in to the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. And also, a Coast Guard Petty Officer who performed several lifesaving rescues against floodwaters raging through a summer camp, who is to be awarded the Legion of Merit for his heroism in doing his duty.
The tie-in to the single legislative accomplishment of this administration is someone who will receive a whole $5,000 of extra income this year due to the lack of tax on tips and overtime. The administrator admonished the Democrats for not passing his tax breaks, claiming they "wanted large-scale tax increases to hurt the people, instead." From that same bill, the top 10 percent get three times as much as the highlighted person's benefit, and the top 1 percent get ten times as much benefit in tax breaks as the highlighted person does, so tell me again who "the people" are that supposedly were getting harmed by not passing a bill that was full of giveaways to those who already have an excess? And also that contained significant cuts to assistance that people like the featured person might have as a way of making ends meet?
Supposedly, alongside this economic windfall represented mostly in the Dow Jones Industrial Average continuing to climb in points, there's a new initiative where the Treasury Department will allocate $1,000 per child born from 2025 to 2028, with the funds automatically invested in the stock market and ready for withdrawal at age 18 at the minimum for said child, with the opportunity for grown-ups to contribute more to such an account, and for certain uses of the money to allow for tax-free withdrawal. Which sounds an awful lot like a slightly less strict version of the Qualified Tuition Plan, known more commonly as a 529 plan. which has been in existence since 1996. The biggest difference, of course, being that people contribute to a 529 plan and the states generally run them, rather than having money pulled directly out of the U.S. Treasury to be invested in the private stock market for the benefit of corporations. Of course, the announcement of this plan suggests that philanthropists are doing most of the funding of these $1,000 windfalls for children invested in the private stock market. I have to say, whomever came up with this idea had a pretty smart thought about how to get government dollars into the private market to play with, while making it look like this wasn't a massive giveaway because theoretically, the kids can cash out as early as 18.
Why do I say "whomever came up with this?" Because either the administrator or the speechwriter demonstrated in front of us that they do not understand economics, and especially not economics related to import duties, in the slightest.
One of the primary reasons for our country’s stunning economic turnaround, the biggest in history — where the Dow Jones broke 50,000 four years ahead of schedule, and the S&P hit 7,000, where it wasn’t supposed to do it for many years — were tariffs. I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They were ripping us so badly. You all know that? Everybody knows it. Even the Democrats know it. They just don’t want to say it. And yet these countries are now happy and so are we. We made deals -- the deals are all done and they’re happy. They’re not making money like they used to. But we’re making a lot of money. There was no inflation, tremendous growth. And the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong. They got it really wrong.Donald Trump hasn't called anything correctly, because you can't be right when you are fundamentally wrong about a concept. Import duties aren't paid by foreign countries any more than Mexico was paying for the wall he wanted to erect on the line between the United States and Mexico. Import duties are paid by the company or the person importing the good(s) from another country. They're taxes paid by the people in the destination country because the government wants to prevent their own people from always preferring a cheaper, foreign-made good to one produced in their own country. Getting "ripped off" usually means paying a higher price for an inferior good, which is not something that import duties would fix in the slightest. So what's supposedly getting "fixed" by an executive levying arbitrary import duties against other countries? Well, he wants to be a "deal-maker," to be the guy who says, "well, I could just break both of your legs, but since you sucked up to me so nicely, I'll only break one of your shins instead and we'll both agree that this was great and merciful and I'm the powerful one who did it."
Which is why he then throws a hissy fit about the Court that has otherwise allowed him to do whatever he wanted telling him that this time, they won't let him.
And then just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, came down. Very unfortunate ruling.But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made — right, Scott? — knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and, therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement. So, despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful countries saving, is saving our country the kind of money we’re taking in, peace protecting — many of the wars I’ve settled was because of the threat of tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without — will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better — leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.[absolute spit-take]
Not for the mobster mentality thing, that we already knew, not even for the "oh, I don't need Congressional approval for this," because we already also knew that, but that he thinks he can effectively repeal the Sixteenth Amendment and usher in an age of prosperity through the levying of duties on the population of the country. Because that has worked spectacularly well in the past history of the United States. [heavy sarcasm intended.] Along with, of course, his continued wrongheaded belief that the countries whose goods are hit with the duties as they are imported will be the ones paying said duties, instead of the importers.
Also, you'll notice the theme running through so far that everyone who opposes him or rightly says that his ideas won't work or are harmful is wrong. 22 Nobel economists were wrong that his tariff plan would hurt the United States, because the stock market is still going strong. The Democrats are always wrong, and not mistaken-wrong, but willfully hurtful wrong, who are out to cause pain and suffering through malice instead of ignorance. Even the Supreme Court is wrong, because it told him he couldn't do something, and he's the chief executive, therefore everything he does must always be right. You can see more of this insistence that it has to be malice rather than any other reason when he blames Democrats for inflation and high prices.
From trade to health care, from energy to immigration, everything was stolen and rigged in order to drain the wealth out of the productive, hardworking people who make our country great, who make our country run. Under Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond, it reached a breaking point with the Green New Scam, open borders for everyone — they poured in by the millions and millions from prisons, from mental institutions, they were murderers — 11,888 murders — they came into our country, you allowed that to happen. And record-setting inflation that cost the typical family $34,000 in just a speck of time.This is typical for this administrator, this black-and-white thinking where there's only him as the force for good in the world and everyone else who isn't aligned totally with him is completely evil and acting on complete evil, rather than any lesser motivation, or through lack of information. There's no gray area for this administrator, no admission that he might be wrong on anything important, or even only 95% correct instead of 135% correct.
Now, the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word affordability, a word, they just used it because somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure. You caused that problem. You caused that problem. They knew their statements were a lie, they knew it, they knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them.
This shows up in his framing of the Affordable Care Act, and his supposed replacement for it that is direct cash payments to people and negotiated prescription drug costs for consumers, rather than subsidies for health insurance.
I’m also confronting one of the biggest rip-offs of our times, the crushing cost of health care, caused by you. Since the passage of the “Unaffordable Care Act,” sometimes referred to as Obamacare, big insurance companies have gotten rich. It was meant for the insurance companies, not for the people. With our government giving them hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year, as their stock prices soared 1,000, 1,200, 1,400 and even 1,700%, like nothing else. That’s why I introduced the great health care plan. I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people, so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost. In addition, my plan requires maximum price transparency. That’s a big deal. Sounds so simple, so big. And I did that in my first term and the Democrats immediately terminated it, with the full knowledge that they were doing a very bad thing for the people. Costs were going to go way up and that’s what happened, and now I’m bringing them way down on health care and everything else.That swipe there about the "third term" is also his way of referring to the idea that the election of 2020, which he lost, and healthily, was somehow "stolen" from him through whatever conspiracy theory he wants to gesture at, no matter how absurd.
I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs like has never happened before. Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could. They tried, most didn’t try, actually, but they tried, they said they tried. They couldn’t do it. They didn’t even come close. They were all talk and no action. But I got it done, under my just-enacted most-favored nation agreements, Americans who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs, anywhere, the lowest price.
So, in my first year of my second term — should be my third term, but strange things happen — I took prescription drugs. a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement.
The plan, as given in this high-level detail here, has one very specific flaw in it: who, exactly, are these newly-enriched and freed health care purchasers going to get their insurance plans from, again? Is there some new player that's being introduced here that will drive the costs of insurance and care down because they'll be able to offer the same or better levels of coverage for lower cost? Has this government decided they are now in the business of selling health care plans to everyone? What incentive, exactly, is there for the companies to drive costs down, instead of setting their prices so that all of that government subsidy to the people isn't immediately sucked back up by these companies, for no improvements in services or costs. If he were interested in doing it this way, he'd announce that he's going to use anti-trust and anti-cartel powers in the government to force insurance monopolies and conglomerates to break up and actually compete with each other, instead of being the province of oligopolists. Or have the Congress introduce legislation declaring that the government will be the sole payer for any and all health insurance and/or prescription drugs, ending the tyranny of insurance companies and their arbitrary policies and rates once and for all. Like most countries with socialized medicine have done. He could get the Republicans to do a lot of things that would be real changes to the industry and would benefit ordinary people greatly, but would impoverish those who have grown very wealthy feeding on a captive populace.
And the supposed savings are coupon cards or prices obtained by ordering directly through a manufacturer website, rather than any kind of negotiation with companies where the government uses its leverage as a buyer and provider of such things to encourage companies to accept the price being offered, which will still net them plenty of profit, rather than charging outsized prices and in turn causing inflation of insurance costs for the consumer to pay, and that's assuming the insurance covers the thing enough for someone to still make their co-pays on the drugs themselves. And it mostly only works for people who are paying cash, so, again, where exactly is the savings and all that money that's supposedly being freed up and returned to the consumer going? This is gilded, meant to make someone think that they're getting something shiny and valuable, when all you have to do is scratch the surface to see that the biggest expense made on the thing was enough gold leaf to convince you, the sucker, that you were getting a good deal.
With regard to data centers and their power needs, the administrator proposes allowing data center companies to build and maintain their own power plants. Three Mile Island would like a word. Fukushima would like one, too, and so would all of the other disasters around unsafe power plants, improperly sealed waste, and all the other things that a company that is looking to run a power generation plant as cheaply as possible, and likely with as little regulatory oversight as possible, are going to be extremely prone to. Do you really trust companies that are coming up with stochastic parrots to be able to build and run an entire power plant according to safe specifications?
Introducing the next featured person, who has a plight of having put in multiple offers to buy a home and having companies with rental portfolios swoop in and offer better offers in cash, sight unseen, the administrator says he wants to ban "large Wall Street firms" from owning properties like that. That's actually good policy. I'd say the right thing to do would be to make it a ban on anyone owning a property where they primarily use it for rental income instead of a residence or doing business in it. If we think landlordism is a blight when corporations do it, then we should also think of it as a blight when people do it as well.
The next gilt gift to the people is that workers are going to get access to the same type of retirement plans offered to federal workers (good), with an entire $1,000 per year of matching contributions from the government to help grow their retirement accounts. That's not nearly enough to build a real retirement account with matching contributions, much like how the $1,000 accounts for children isn't actually enough to build into educational costs or home-buying costs, or business start-up costs. The assumption here is that the stock market can only ever go up, and at paces that will mean that paltry sum will make you a multi-millionaire by the time you hit retirement age. And that assumes, of course, that someone can find that amount of money to get the matching amount in the first place, which, in the kinds of places where there aren't matching employer-matching retirement accounts of wages that pay enough, is going to be hard enough. That's why we still have Social Security, after all.
From there, the administrator swings back into anti-immigrant mode, with a specific slander that he's repeated before, about the Somali immigrant community of Minnesota. This particular slander is one that he's deployed because he has a personal distaste for Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, and during his slander of the people of Minnesota, the audio clearly picks up someone trying to tell him off about it, before the Republicans applaud lines and chant "U-S-A!" to drown out what's being said. There are a lot of people in that chamber disqualifying themselves as moral and ethical human beings, much less as people with the fortitude and intellect to work as representatives of the people. He also implies that other liberal states with high immigrant populations are also allowing the "American taxpayer" to be hurt through the actions of their immigrant populations.
It's also funny that he blames immigrant communities, saying they "remind us that there are large parts of the world where bribery, corruption, and lawlessness are the norm, not the exception.", when he's not above taking a bribe of his own, even if he claims it's for his presidential library, and neither are his Cabinet secretaries or subordinates. "Every accusation is a confession," is one of those things that gets said about him a lot, and it's usually true.
Staying in the theme of slandering immigrants and immigrant communities, the next two people name-checked are a child who was a victim of a terrible accident involving a commercial vehicle striking a parked car at speed, and a victim of a killing. The narrative is that the fault is with the president who "let" the immigrants in with "open borders," then compounded by the state of California issuing a commercial driver's license to the operator of the vehicle that struck the car, or that the "sanctuary cities" are "deadly". And that the Democratic party is very happy with crime and corruption happening in the country, of course, because he wants to portray the Democratic party as immoral and evil.
We can never forget that many in this room not only allowed the border invasion to happen before I got involved, but indeed, they would do it all over again if they ever had the chance. If they ever got elected, they would open up those borders to some of the worst criminals anywhere in the world. The only thing standing between Americans and a wide-open border right now is President Donald J. Trump and our great Republican patriots in Congress. Thank you. As we speak, Democrats in this chamber have cut off all funding for the Department of Homeland Security. It’s all cut off, all cut off. They have instituted another Democrat shutdown, the first one costing us two points on GDP. Two points we lost on GDP, which probably made them quite happy actually. Now they have closed the agency responsible for protecting Americans from terrorists and murderers. Tonight, I’m demanding the full and immediate restoration of all funding for the border security, homeland security of the United States, and also for helping people clean up their snow. […] One of the great things about the State of the Union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe. So tonight, I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.Self-aggrandizement, of course, because he imagines himself as the person standing at the border between the country and evil hordes outside and saying "You shall not pass."
Throughout, of course, the administrator continues to portray immigration primarily as people with criminal intention in mind, reports and statistics about how immigrants commit less crimes than citizens and are usually victimized more be damned.
And, of course, in asking for the legislators to stand in agreement with him about the supposed purpose of the government, he really should brush up on a very old document.
We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.If you're looking for the first duty of the American government, it's right here. Maybe you could argue he's talking about "provide for the common defence," here, but that's in a list with many other things that the government is supposed to be doing, rather than prioritizing something to the detriment of others.
Clearly, some of the members of Congress have read their Constitutions, or recall them better, or are otherwise interested in ensuring all of the things in the Preamble come to pass, because the would-be-strongman chides them for not agreeing with him, when the correct thing to do would have been for the entire gallery to stay seated.
Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I’m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens. In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country. They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself.In a country that passed The Voting Rights Act of 1965, The Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, the Twenty-Fourth Amendment to the United States Constitution, and several other pieces of legislation with the explicit intent of preventing disenfranchisement and ensuring that every citizen, regardless of wealth, sex, or skin color has the right to vote, and to provide remedies against those states that traditionally engaged in disenfranchisement because they didn't want the "wrong" people voting, I'd say that a piece of legislation that erects significant barriers to citizens voting, in pursuit of a spectre with no actual data behind it that noncitizens are voting in various elections should be very vocally opposed by anyone who believes in the direct democratic process. It's no surprise that this act, and the things the administrator talks about, are specifically meant to make it harder for citizens to vote, like women who changed their name upon marrying, poorer citizens who don't have access to, or can't pay the fees for, documents like birth certificates or passports (who are going to be disproportionately dark-skinned), and others who aren't the white men that this administration and the Republicans who are supporting it in legislation and in the courts believe should be the unquestioned rulers of everyone. This is, after all, a man who was captured in photographs peeking over the privacy partition to ensure that his wife voted the way he wanted her to. It's a bad bill.
And perhaps most importantly, I’m asking you to approve the SAVE America Act, to stop illegal aliens and others who are unpermitted persons from voting in our sacred American elections, the cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant. It’s very simple. All voters must show voter ID. All voters must show proof of citizenship in order to vote. And no more crooked mail-in ballots except for illness, disability, military or travel. None. And this should be an easy one and, by the way, is polling at 89%, including Democrats, 89%. And even the new communist mayor of New York City. I think he’s a nice guy, actually speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy. Just said they want people to shovel snow. They got hit hard. Wants them to shovel snow. But if you apply for that job, you need to show two original forms of ID and a Social Security card.
Yet they don’t want identification for the greatest privilege of them all: voting in America. No, it’s no good, no good. Both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on the policy that we just enunciated, and Congress should unite and enact this common sense, country saving legislation right now. And it should be before anything else happens.
And the reason they don’t want to do it, why would anybody not want voter ID? One reason, because they want to cheat. There’s only one reason. They make up all excuses. They say it’s racist. They come up with things. You almost say what imagination they have. They want to cheat, they have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we’re going to stop it. We have to stop it, John.
To throw more red meat to the base, the next person featured is a child who socially transitioned at school, then was not in secure housing, had a judge try to ensure that the home environment would be accepting, and eventually either detransitioned, or, equally as likely, was forced back into the closet and now has to present as a woman. Since there's a scholarship to Liberty University mentioned, a place that is religious to the core and that would not tolerate any form of gender variance, I strongly suspect that if there are still genderfeels happening, they're being suppressed until this person can get into a more stable and better-protected environment, where the government and family won't be able to hurt or pressure this person for making a true decision. Since this is an indeterminate situation, I've scrubbed the pronouns and the name of the person from the transcript, because I wouldn't want to deadname the person or use improper pronouns.
In the gallery tonight are [REDACTED] and [SCRUBBED] mother, Michele. In 2021, [NAME] was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition [SCRUB] to a new gender, treating [ACCORDINGLY] and hiding it from [SCRUB] parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Before long, a confused [NAME] ran away from home. After [SCRUB] was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return [NAME] to [SCRUB] parents because they did not immediately [RECOGNIZE THEIR CHILD'S GENDER]. [NAME] was thrown into a[...] state home and suffered terribly for a long time. But today, all of that is behind them. Because [NAME] is a proud and wonderful young [PERSON] with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University. [NAME] and Rachelle, please stand up. And thank you for your great bravery.
And who can believe that we’re even speaking about things like this? 15 years ago, if somebody was up here and said that, they’d say, “What’s wrong with him?” But now we have to say it because it’s going on all over numerous states. They’re not even telling the parents. But surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will. Who would believe that we’re even talking about it? We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately.
Nobody stands up, these people are crazy. I’m telling them they’re crazy. Amazing. 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, didn’t we?
Another "Democrats are destroying the country" line. I'm sure scholars who analyze these speeches are putting this one in a category of "highly partisan and aggressive" compared to the speeches of predecessors and others. There's always a certain amount of "stop obstructing my agenda" in the speech, but the last administrator was much more about "calling in," asking for cooperation and negotiation and for the wheels of government to work, rather than trying to portray his opponents as irredeemably evil. Even if some of us were hoping he'd do just that, based on what they were doing, or preventing from happening, and have been doing for the last several decades.
The summary of the person's situation has been tailored to the administrator's message, of course, but reading it strikes me as "student wants to socially transition, has a home life that will not accept this, is trying it at school, with requests that it not come back to the home life, because of fear of consequences. Transition leaks back to home life, parents throw child out of house, student now has to try and find a living situation with no parental support, eventually is found as a runaway, and the court understands that returning the child to the parents is not a good idea, if the home environment will continue to be hostile to the student. Court probably decides, though, that all the other options are worse, tells the student to suck it up and pretend, and the student is dutifully doing so until such time as the student can establish an independent and functional household, and then will go no-contact with the parents and try transition again, to see whether it's truly correct for the student or not."
The hardest part about this situation is that for the people who are the most vociferously opposed to transition, the easiest way to get the desired result is to let the child experiment and come to their own conclusion about it. We know from research that children have a strong idea of their gender identity at a very young age, but it's usually the onset of biological puberty that brings that question to the fore. Many children decide that, no, they do have a firm gender identity, and it's cisgender, but they have some presentation tweaks they'd like to enact, and they'll be happy. The ones who are trans want to have the easiest time being the correct gender, and that usually means trying to arrest the puberty that will come to them and instead go on the pathway of the puberty that matches their gender. But it is apparently an extremely hard thing to accept that children are independent beings with their own self-identities, rather than extensions of their parents, to be controlled like any other piece of property.
(And if the state were rip[ping children from their parents' arms and forcing them to transition their gender, you can bet your ass the Democrats would be up in arms about it. Oh, wait, they are, because the states where that is happening are all states that refuse to allow any kind of gender-affirming care to minors, or who are passing legislation to ban the existence of trans people in public and private spaces. And who are ready to so the same thing to gay people, women, and black and brown people as soon as they think they can get away with it.)
So we've covered the Republican bases at this point - trans people, brown and black people, uppity women, and populist appeals that are in front of massive benefits to the richest. What's left?
Ah, yes, a mention of Charlie Kirk's killing (a man who sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind), and a woman killed by a man who had been released on his own recognizance, despite a lengthy arrest record. (With the implication that the arrest record was for violent crime, rather than, say, a dozen citations for being a Black man in a racist society.) And military members attacked by others (always of foreign origins, we note, and always people who he thinks are insane or otherwise sociopathic). Which leads to large claims about having stopped wars in other countries through his presence and the presence of the people in his Cabinet, and through military might like attacking Iran over having nuclear capability, like potential war crimes by attacking non-military boats in international waters, claiming they are drug cartel boats, and by engaging in regime change in Venezuela. Peace through strength, valorization of military and police forces. All credit to him, all blame to the opposition. The rest of the speech is giving awards, and talking about military actions, and then finally landing on the boilerplate about the United States being the best country in the world, bar none, the most favored of the Being Represented by the Tetragrammaton, Manifest Destiny, Columbia, and so forth. (The matter about regime change in Venezuela is bookended by a story of a person being reunited after her father was sent to a prison for daring to run as an opposition candidate, and a story of a helicopter pilot landing troops to do the regime change, who was being awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor for his continued duty while wounded.)
There's one last quoted piece to work with here, before he launches into how awesome the military is and how powerful it is and how he's doing great things with it.
Starting last summer, I deployed our National Guard and federal law enforcement to restore law and order to our most dangerous cities, including Memphis, Tennessee -- big success. New Orleans, Louisiana. A big success in our nation’s capital itself, Washington, D.C., where we have almost no crime anymore in Washington, D.C. How did that happen? In fact, crime in Washington is now at the lowest level ever recorded, and murders in D.C. this January were down close to 100% from a year ago. They don’t like to hear that.Hello, Minnesota? How are things going with you? Chicago? All the people who have been under duress and siege from the masked, unidentified kidnappers and murderers who continue to claim to be federal agents? How do you feel about crime happening in your cities? And how do you feel about crime happening in D.C., when, as noted above, we are dealing with an administrator and cabinet who are deeply engaged in graft, grift, and crime themselves? He says that he's made every place safer and the murders are down, even though, as commentators to the speech noted, he seems to have reveled very much in descriptions involving gore, blood, and viscera in telling the stories of the people he wanted to laud.
And not only that, he took his time doing all of this, breaking his own record for longest State of the Union address, most of which had nothing to do with policy, nothing to do with serious policy, and lots to do with him, or the stories he wanted to tell.
And, as has become tradition, after the administrator gives their address, a designee of the opposition policy provides a rebuttal and a counterpoint speech to the address. The newly-elected Democratic governor of Virginia, Abigail Spanberger, was chosen to give the rebuttal, and chose to do so from the house of the legislature in Virginia. This transcript also does not indicate places where there were applause breaks in the speech, but there were only applause breaks in the speech, rather than chants or trying to drown out people who were likely fact-checking him in real time.
The response chooses to focus on three questions, at least one of which is close to the way that Ronald Reagan phrased his own questions while running for President:
Is the President working to make life more affordable for you and your family?And unlike the administrator, the response references things that we can easily look up and find the veracity of. Or look out our windows and see the veracity of.
Is the President working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad?
Is the President working for YOU?
Because since this President took office last year, his reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs.These are the kinds of things that are more viscerally present in the lives of ordinary people. They can see prices going up, and they have import duties to thank for it.
[…]
Rural health clinics in Virginia are already closing their doors thanks to the so-called "One Big Beautiful Bill" championed by the President and Republicans in Congress.
And tonight, the President celebrated this law — the one threatening rural hospitals, stripping healthcare from millions of Americans, and driving up costs in energy and housing. All while cutting food programs for hungry kids.
They also know that in the cities, including many of the ones that the administrator claims have had great reductions in crime thanks to his actions, there are still kidnappers and murderers looking for anyone brown, and who are willing to deploy chemical weapons against people protesting their actions, and who are trying to intimidate the citizens that are exercising their right to document the actions of people claiming they are acting in the name of the government.
And yet, our President has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans — and they have done it without a warrant.The speech brings us back from supposed great economic benefits and the belief that only he can save us from our enemies, and back to the reality that the people who are supposedly running the country are not just incompetents, but actively trying to destroy the things they're in charge of.
They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets.
And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.
Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children, or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.
Our President told us tonight that we are safer because these agents arrest mothers and detain children. Think about that.
Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed — not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.
Here’s the truth: over the last year, through DOGE, mass firings, and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation’s most serious positions, our President has endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.This is what should be the focus, when it comes to the question of whether or not the government is working for the people, or whether there is any kind of progress, or whether anyone in the government that is a political appointee has been acting according to the law, with any respect for the law, or should be allowed to be in their position because they are ineligible for the positions, or at least would have to disclose all of the criming and illegal actions they have taken both before and while they are in the offices they have been appointed to. There is a bet going right now that we will have a precedent set of "The President and his people can violate the law with impunity, and the people who succeed them will take the Nixon route and either pardon or look the other way on them." And that at some point, it won't be a matter of democracy, but of an administrator simply choosing not to leave and everything will bend around him to ensure that it happens, even with a veneer of democracy. The people of the country are very fighty about that, and they're winning against the incompetents that have been deployed against them, even though there are definitely casualties and fatalities in this fight.
[…]
The scale of the corruption is unprecedented.
There’s the cover-up of the Epstein files[.]
The crypto scams[.]
Cozying up to foreign princes for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms[.]
Putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation’s capital[.]
This is not what our founders envisioned.
The rest of the speech is about the people, and the way the people can defeat the bullies, the incompetents, and the people who attack them. Obviously, there's something to be said about how electeds tend to believe that voting cures all ills, but the voting is a part of the method for knocking these fascists back and denying them any kind of legitimacy or any kind of power that they aren't staring at and keeping a hand on to prevent it from slipping away from them.
In a much shorter form, the response speech was more relevant, more important, and more accurate than the speech that preceded it. If the Democratic Party is willing to actually say the message, at the level of crudity and honesty that it requires, with the volume it requires, and with the repetition it requires, they should be able to instill in that part of the country that doesn't want open authoritarian and fascist government the necessary will to punch Nazis in the face, as many times as it takes to get them to go away, in as many ways as they present their face to be punched.
If we want to say the state of the union is strong, then fisticuffs, metaphorical and possibly physical, are in the cards for everyone. If we're feeling generous, Queensbury rules.
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Date: 2026-02-27 01:16 pm (UTC)