Mar.05

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Trump Speaks to the Nation

Many politicians love the sound of their own voice. That is particularly true of Donald Trump, whose love of his own voice just seems to grow and grow and grow. This being the case, it's not too surprising that last night's address to a joint session of Congress is the longest such address in American history, clocking in at a little over 1 hour, 40 minutes. That leaves newly demoted #2 Bill Clinton, who also loves the sound of his own voice, in the dust. Bubba's longest joint address, in 2000, checked in at a little less than an hour and a half. Anyhow, if you have a lot of time to kill, and a high threshold for pain, you can watch Trump's speech here.

We're going to give over the entire post today to the speech, in part because it's an important story, and in part because it takes a lot of time to watch nearly 2 hours of Trump speaking, organize our thoughts, and try to write something useful.

Five Things That Were Present in Large Amounts

We thought about how to organize things, and we've decided to break our write-up into three sections. In this one, we will be covering the main elements of the performance, at least from our vantage point.

• Re-Litigating the Election: Donald Trump is thrilled that he not only won last year's election, but that he did it without needing an assist from the Electoral College. And so, he could not help but remind everyone of the fact that he won the Electoral College, the popular vote, all the swing states, and yadda, yadda, yadda. Of course, he continues to claim that he won in a rout of historic proportions, which is, at best, wild spin. For the record, his popular-vote margin was the 50th largest in the history of presidential elections, of which there have been 60. His electoral-vote margin was the 48th largest. In other words, he outpaced 9 presidents by one measure and 11 presidents by another.
  
  Of course, the trick-du-jour used by the modern GOP, so as to create the illusion of a mandate, is counties won. And Trump definitely went there, noting that he took 2,700 counties to 525 for Kamala Harris. Anyone who shares such a keen insight is hoping that people don't think too closely about the fact that, say, America's least populous county (Loving County, Texas, with 64 residents) is not exactly equal to America's most populous county (Los Angeles County, California, with around 10 million residents).
  
  
• Victory Laps: Of course, once Trump was done celebrating his November triumph, he moved on to the enormous successes of his first 5+ weeks back in the White House. Fortunately, he has been talking to "people," so he had a lot of really firm evidence for his claims. He decreed: "In fact, it has been stated by many that the first month of our presidency—it's our presidency—is the most successful in the history of our nation. By many. And what makes it even more impressive is that do you know who No. 2 is? George Washington. How about that? How about that?"
  
  "Many" do not seem to know their history very well. Undoubtedly, to support Trump's claim that he's had the best start ever, the #2 that he's outdistanced had to be someone who is a presidential legend, and is not a Democrat (sorry, FDR). The problem is that Washington did relatively little in his first month in office, since there was no real government to lead, as yet. "Many" should probably have gone with St. Ronnie of Reagan.
  
  
• Enemies of the State: Trump is a demagogue, and so he simply has to remind his audience which people they need to hate. Last night, there were two targets that loomed particularly large. The first, of course, was immigrants/undocumented immigrants, often with the usual racially charged language. The reason we write "immigrants/undocumented immigrants" is that Trump was sometimes not clear if he was talking about the latter group or the former. We presume that lack of precision was by design, specifically the design of Stephen Miller.
  
  The other enemy of the state was/is trans Americans, who would appear to be the biggest threat to mom, apple pie, and the American way of life since the Soviet Union. Actually, given Trump's views on the Russians, the trans folks are probably a bigger threat, in his mind. The trans menace didn't just get one mention, or one passage, in the speech, it was a recurring theme. Trump complained about trans girls playing high school sports, about scientists doing research into transgender mice, about schools that forcibly convert children to the other gender, and about how gender reassignment surgery needs to be permanently outlawed. It's an obsession.
  
  We still have a pending item on this basic subject, once time and space allow, but we will preview the basic argument right now: Republicans think they have a winner here and, at least at the moment, they are right. So, they are going to beat this issue into the ground, and then some. And there is absolutely nothing the Democrats can say, or do, or not say, or not do, to change that.
  
  
• Lies: Trump is the most truth-challenged president in American history, and is almost certainly the most truth-challenged politician in American history. Truth be told, we can't think of someone who would even be in the same ZIP Code. Maybe Boss Tweed, although he was more corrupt than he was a liar.
  
  That the speech would be full of blatant falsehoods was the safest bet in town, and Trump did not disappoint (if that's the right word here). If you would like all the gory details, you can read the fact checks from the AP, CBS News, ABC News, NBC News, CNN, The New York Times or PolitiFact. You'll probably want to read more than one, though, because there were too many lies for any one outlet to cover them all.
  
  For our part, we'll cover three examples. First, just to give a sense of the thing, we'll give one example (from among many) of a rapid-fire succession of lies. As part of acknowledging Elon Musk (who was present, was wearing a tie, was not wearing a black MAGA hat, and did not get the Presidential Medal of Freedom), Trump repeated the "facts" that DOGE has gleaned about Social Security payments:

  Believe it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old. It lists 3.6 million people from ages 110 to 119. I don't know any of them. I know some people who are rather elderly but not quite that elderly. 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. And money is being paid to many of them, and we are searching right now.
  
  In fact, [AG] Pam Bondi, good luck. Good luck. You're going to find it. But a lot of money is paid out to people, because it just keeps getting paid and paid and nobody does—and it really hurts Social Security, it hurts our country. 1.3 million people from ages 150 to 159, and over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are age over 160 years old. We have a healthier country than I thought, [HHS Secretary] Bobby [Kennedy].
  
  Including, to finish, 1,039 people between the ages of 220 and 229. One person between the age of 240 and 249—and one person is listed at 360 years of age. More than 100 years—more than 100 years older than our country. But we're going to find out where that money is going, and it's not going to be pretty.

  Remember the old saying about "too much of a good thing"? As we have written several times, none of these claims are remotely accurate, and they are a product of Musk and the DOGEys misunderstanding, or deliberately misrepresenting, what they've found. That said, a somewhat less informed person might buy the first claim, or even the second claim. But then Trump had to keep piling on, and the more outlandish he got, the more it strained credulity. For example, if there really is someone in the system who is listed as 360 years old (and there might very well be), isn't that clearly the result of a typo? Is there any other explanation? Last we checked, Methuselah is not an American citizen. And once Trump makes one claim that clearly doesn't pass the smell test, then it creates doubts about his other claims. He would have been better off to quit while he was ahead.
  
  (Oh, and by the way, Trump admitted once again that Musk is running DOGE.)
  
  The second example we will take note of is one (among many) where Trump was guilty of a lie by omission. These aren't as easy to pick up on as the overt lies, and so they don't get as much attention, but they were certainly there. Perhaps most obviously, Trump bragged: "And today, interest rates took a beautiful drop, big beautiful drop—it's about time." This is true, but what the President neglected to mention is that the drop was in 10-year Treasury yields, from 4.3% to 4.2%. And the problem here is that a drop in 10-year Treasury yields generally happens because investors are feeling bearish about the economy—say, because they fear that tariffs will lead to a trade war and inflation.
  
  And finally, because we want to try to give readers something that is not going to appear anywhere else, we'll note a couple of related lies that were not in the speech, per se. Naturally, Trump did much bragging about his success in securing the border, in just five short weeks. In particular, he twice declared: "illegal border crossings last month were by far the lowest ever recorded ever."
  
  That's actually a tricky claim to evaluate, for a couple of reasons. First, the numbers come from... the Trump administration, which might just have some incentive to cook the books. Second, there's not really a way to know how many border crossings there were; the actual figure that is tracked is the number of arrests. It is true that the number of arrests in the last month (8,500 or so) is way down. But reduced border crossings is just one possible cause of that. Another is incompetent or lax enforcement. Yet another is, again, cooking the books. And, in any event, there were actually many months in the 1960s (when records were first kept) that had fewer arrests than last month.
  
  All that said, this isn't actually the lie we wanted to talk about here. The White House provided a feed for those who wished to watch the speech online. And the White House feed had a chyron that sometimes urged people to "text President Trump" (get ready for 10 fundraising texts a day, anyone stupid enough to do that), and other times provided supplemental "facts" in support of Trump's speech. Among those "facts" were the claims that border crossings are down 94% compared to the last month of the Biden administration, and that arrests are up 627%. C'mon, can anyone possibly believe that? Even a nuclear strike on the southwestern U.S. could not produce such dramatic results in a month's time. Especially since the 627% figure is in direct contradiction to the claim that border crossings (again, that really means "arrests") were the lowest they've ever been.
  
  Such obvious falsehoods just don't make political sense to us. Although Trump HAS been known to take his cues from a fellow who advised that politicians should tell lies so colossal that people will believe them, since nobody "could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously." So, what do we know?
  
  
• Theatrics: The ratings for these speeches are pretty terrible, since nobody watches except political junkies (and even many of them can't stomach it). Still, regardless of the president, there's always a fair bit of theater, particularly involving the guests that the party in control of the White House has invited to be in the audience. If you're going to watch the speech, then tolerating this sort of silliness is part of the price of admission.
  
  Among the "props" that Trump used last night were the family of Laken Riley, who were there to remind everyone that immigrants are very bad people; Payton McNabb, who was there to remind everyone that trans Americans are very bad people; DJ Daniel, who is young and Black and suffering from brain cancer and wants to be a cop, and was there to remind everyone that police are awesome and that there are many health problems in America; Jason Hartley, who wants to go to West Point, and was there to remind us that soldiers are awesome; and the family of Corey Comperatore, who were there to remind you that Trump was targeted by an assassin and "saved by God."
  
  We only have a few observations here. First, Trump does not seem to be aware—or, maybe he doesn't care—that his point about DJ Daniel was something of a self-own. Here is the President's own explanation of what happened: "DJ's doctors believe his cancer likely came from a chemical he was exposed to when he was younger." Trump proposed that the leadership of RFK Jr. would stop things like this from happening again. Can anyone really believe that, even if Kennedy was a competent, conscientious fellow (which he is not)? If children are exposed to carcinogenic chemicals, particularly if we are talking about a Black child in a working-class community in Texas, we have to assume—absent information to the contrary—that he is the victim of a lack of proper regulation. And this is a deregulation president, who represents a deregulation party.
  
  (Incidentally, a quick sidebar: In our item yesterday about Bobby Jr., we included his tweet on the measles outbreak in Texas, and wrote: "If we had not told you the source of this message, and instead had tried to present it as a tweet sent out by Anthony Fauci a couple of years ago, you would have bought it, right? Is there ANYTHING here that is inconsistent with the approach seen under Fauci and other grown-ups of administrations past?" Two readers, M.W. in Ottawa, Canada and L.S. in Greensboro, NC, quite correctly wrote in and observed that the last line of the tweet, about "physician-administered outpatient vitamin A," is part of Kennedy's non-scientific medical woo. Our mistake.)
  
  The second observation we have about the audience-member props is that, as part of the drama, Trump revealed that not only does Hartley want to attend West Point but, as of yesterday... he's been accepted. It was certainly a nice moment, though it did leave the impression that strings were pulled on Hartley's behalf. If he got in on merit, then congratulations to him. If he did not, well, it's more than a little tacky to cheapen the United States Military Academy for prop purposes.
  
  And that brings us to our third observation. We have no doubt that Laken Riley's family loved her very much, and was devastated by her senseless death. However, it does make us cringe—more than a little bit—when her family allows both themselves, and her memory, to be utilized (over and over) in service of an angry, xenophobic, not-so-subtly racist agenda. Perhaps it is not our place to say such things, but we can't help our instinctive response.

Five Things That Were Present in Small Amounts

Needless to say, "small amounts" is a somewhat relative term. That said, these are things that there wasn't too much of, or any of, in the speech.

• Class: On one hand, a speech like this is supposed to be an "important" occasion on which a president speaks to the whole nation. On the other hand, it's also a political event, and a president's instinct is to get maximum mileage out of the bully pulpit. A fair chunk of the evening is supposed to be spent on the person's own agenda/accomplishments, but there's also an enormous temptation to take the opposition down a peg or two.
  
  In general, there are two workarounds that presidents use to bridge the gap between "serious, unifying occasion" and "poke the other party in the eyes." The first is to use indirect references, like "my predecessor" or "my likely opponent." The other is to largely limit the critical comments to election years. For example, in Joe Biden's four joint addresses to Congress, he only mentioned Trump indirectly, and did so 1 (2021), 2 (2022), 3 (2023) and 14 (2024) times.
  
  All of this went right out the window last night. Trump doesn't do subtle or indirect, either because he's not capable, or he thinks his base won't be able to read between the lines. And he now hates Biden with a deep and abiding passion, possibly even more than he hates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. So, the President mentioned his predecessor, by name, 16 different times. And the references were generally quite acidic. For example: "Joe Biden didn't just open our borders, he flew illegal aliens over them to overwhelm our schools, hospitals, and communities throughout the country." Or: "[U]nder Joe Biden, the worst president in American history, there were hundreds of thousands of illegal crossings a month and virtually all of them, including murderers, drug dealers, gang members, and people from mental institutions and insane asylums, were released into our country."
  
  Trump also took a brief shot at Kamala Harris, who wasn't there last night, and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who was front and center. In the latter case, Trump used his favorite pejorative nickname, "Pocahontas," and claimed that Warren hopes the war in Ukraine goes on for another 5 years. Afterward, in response to the Pocahontas slur, Sen. Dick Durbin said: "That's kind of a low-rent thing you don't expect from a president of the United States." We can't say we disagree.
  
  
• Eggs: Readers will recall that Trump campaigned on the price of eggs, specifically, and that he promised prices would come down on Day 1 of his term. They have not. In fact, the price has gone up quite a bit, in part because the president does not actually control commodity prices (who knew?) and in part because there is a shortage due to an epidemic of avian flu. And so, what was once a key plank in Trump's platform got precisely 27 words in those 100 minutes of speaking time: "Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control. The egg prices, out of control. And we're working hard to get it back down."
  
  One wonders: What exactly is the expiration date on "It's Joe Biden's fault"? (Yeah, we know, January 20, 2029.)
  
  
• Ukraine and Canada: Given how very much the war in Ukraine, and the trade war against Canada, are in the headlines, these figured to get some serious attention last night. They really didn't.
  
  As to Ukraine, Trump did give the subject a couple of minutes' attention, reiterating that he's a peacemaker (and implying that he damn well better get a Nobel Peace Prize, if the Norwegians know what's good for them). A sizable chunk of the time spent on Ukraine was devoted to a letter that Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent to Trump in the past day or so. Among the passages that Trump quoted was this one:

  My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace that lasts... We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine, maintain its sovereignty and independence... Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time.

  The other passages that Trump quoted were of the same tone and tenor. Meanwhile, reporting on the contents of the letter reveals that Zelenskyy also described the Oval Office incident last Friday as "regrettable."
  
  Presumably, readers can see what's going on here, whether or not Trump can (we honestly don't know if he's personally snowed, or if he just thinks his base will be snowed). "What happened last week was regrettable" is the first cousin to "I'm sorry if anyone was offended." It's a non-apology apology. But that, plus a little flattery/status acknowledgment ("I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership") is probably enough to heal the breach, if that's what Trump wants to do.
  
  So, IS that what Trump wants to do? Well, yesterday Reuters reported that the Ukraine minerals deal is back on, and that it could be signed sometime this week. No other outlet ran with the story, and the White House refused comment. However, Trump's foregoing any jingoism in his speech, along with making a pretty big point about the "important letter" from Zelenskyy (Trump's words) makes us think Reuters could very well be correct.
  
  As to Canada, the story is much the same. Trump talked a lot about tariffs, including a bunch more he plans to levy on other nations, including Brazil, South Korea, India and Japan, on April 2. He also used "tariff" as a verb, as in: "whatever they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them." However, he didn't say all that much about the tariffs on Canada. And guess what? There was reporting yesterday that, once again, Trump is about to back down. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick, who would presumably know, said that a new trade pact might be signed as early as today.
  
  Since the "new trade pact" has not been made public, we cannot know what is in it. However, we will point out three things: (1) It took many months to negotiate the United States-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) during Trump v1.0; (2) USMCA made only small changes from NAFTA, and (3) this new trade deal has been in the works for... days, or MAYBE a couple of weeks? From these three facts, we conclude that something very close to the status quo will be maintained, but that Trump will declare that he secured a major victory.
  
  
• Policy: Inasmuch as these non-State of the Union addresses to Congress take place early in a new president's term, they usually spend some fair amount of time talking about their plans for the next year. Trump actually did very, very little of that, other than to basically suggest "more of the same."
  
  You could go through the speech with a pretty fine-toothed comb, and you wouldn't find many policy ideas that Trump hasn't already offered up a hundred times. He wants to create a new office of shipbuilding in the White House—that's new. And he wants to give a tax break for car payments, but only payments on cars made in America. That's an interesting idea, though it runs into the problem that it's none too easy to decide which cars qualify as "made in America."
  
  As part of his lacking-in-class rhetorical approach, Trump inadvertently highlighted how few policy ideas he really has, particularly policy ideas that are anything beyond "pander to the base." He sniffed:

  This is my fifth such speech to Congress, and, once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud. Nothing I can do. I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to greatest economy in history or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded, and these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won't do it no matter what. Five, five times I've been up here. It's very sad. And it just shouldn't be this way.

  That's not true. If he had said, for example, "I have just fired Elon Musk," we 100% guarantee they would have stood up and cheered lustily. Beyond that, however, everyone knows the score here. During these speeches, the partisans of the president cheer/clap 20-30 times. And the partisans on the other side cheer/clap 5-10 times, to highlight those words or ideas that are unifying and/or bipartisan. That the Democrats rarely, or never, applauded is a really clear illustration that it was a base-only speech, and that as far as Trump is concerned, half of America can pound sand.

• Humor: The lack of humor in the speech was not for lack of trying. Trump had a number of "joke" lines in there, but the only way you could really tell which ones they were was when J.D. Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) were forced to fake-laugh. It is what it is; the ability to deliver a joke is a skill. Some presidents—Abraham Lincoln, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama—had/have it. Some presidents—Lyndon B. Johnson, Richard Nixon, Jimmy Carter, George H.W. Bush—did not. Trump is in the latter group.
  
  Beyond the failed attempts at humor, Trump's delivery was the usual, where it seems like he's having trouble getting out the words. He also had a death grip on his podium, for whatever reason. Maybe he was nervous. Maybe it's hard to stay standing up straight when you have big lifts in your shoes. Maybe he had to pee, and was trying to hold on. We don't know.

The Democratic Response

And finally, here's the story from the other side of the aisle.

• Elissa Slotkin: Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) was given the "honor" of delivering the response. If you want to watch her remarks, they are here. That clip is FAR shorter than Trump's speech (10 minutes vs. 100 minutes). In fact, Slotkin's opening line was a joke about how much less wordy she planned to be.
  
  Despite the much briefer address, the Senator actually managed to cover quite a bit of ground. In fact, you could make a pretty good argument that her 10 minutes had more total substance than Trump's 100 minutes. She offered some critiques of the administration and its policies, of course, focusing particularly on Trump and Elon Musk. She also told her fellow Democrats to get their heads out of the clouds, and to focus on kitchen-table issues. Perhaps most significantly, she gave viewers a three-point plan for what they should be doing right now: (1) Don't tune out, (2) Hold your elected officials, including me, accountable; and (3) Organize—pick just one issue you're passionate about and engage (and doom-scrolling doesn't count).
  
  In short, it was pretty solid. Undoubtedly, what readers REALLY want to know is: Is Slotkin still an up-and-coming star in the Democratic Party? And the answer is: Yes. She doesn't have Reaganesque or Obamaesque presence quite yet, but she clearly knows how to give a speech. And she most certainly wasn't the train wreck that Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) was last year. Is a moderate young woman from a key swing state a potential veep candidate in 2028? Could well be, but Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) is also a contender from the same state.
  
  
• Al Green: Very early in the address—maybe a minute in, if that—Rep. Al Green (D-TX) stood up and shouted "Mr. President, you don't have a mandate!" The Congressman then continued to make noise and to wave his walking stick around for 30-40 seconds before he was escorted out of the gallery on the orders of Mike Johnson.
  
  We don't know if that was a one-man performance, or if Green was elected to do the job by some subset of his colleagues (say, the Congressional Black Caucus, or the Medicare for All Caucus—he's a part of both). In any event, while such a stunt may be beneath the dignity of the occasion, lefty voters online ate it up. Green is fundraising off the incident, and we'd bet pretty good money that he's about to record the best 24-hour take of his entire career.
  
  
• The Gallery: Outside of Green, the Democrats who wanted to make a statement largely decided that the best balance between "protest" and "act like grown ups" was to carry signs that they held up during the speech. Some of them were the standard thing you think of when you hear "signs." For example, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM) was carrying a rectangular, white sign that said: "This is not normal." Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX), who is clearly quite the gentleman, forcibly took the sign from her hand, and threw it away. Both members are fundraising off that incident, by the way.
  
  Most of the Democratic signs were actually paddle-style, like you see at an auction, with a circular cutout mounted on a tongue depressor. On one side was a specific message, like "Musk Steals" or "Protect Medicaid." On the other side was something more generic, like "Lie!" or "False!"
  
  Again, we understand the line that the blue team was trying to walk, but it did come off as a little bit weak-kneed, and perhaps a little elitist. For example, the definitely left-leaning Stephen Colbert had this to say in his monologue last night: "The Democrats came ready to fight back with their little paddles! That is how you save democracy—by quietly dissenting... or bidding on an antique tea set."
  
  
• Pinkos: For the past several Trump addresses to Congress, (many of) the Democratic women wore all white, because that was the preferred costume of the women's suffrage movement. Yesterday, they switched to pink. We thought that was just for breast cancer, but it would appear it is a symbol of woman power in general. Of course, all pink made it somewhat difficult for the male Democrats to consider joining in, in a gesture of solidarity. That said, all-white is not much better on that front—a man in an all white suit looks like a Cuban cigar merchant, or maybe Colonel Sanders.
  
  
• AOC: If you are looking for an example of a Democrat who "gets it," you might find the approach of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) to your liking. She skipped in-person attendance, and instead announced that she'd be doing a live commentary on Bluesky. She had some of the same observations that we do; for example, she agreed that Trump very clearly gave the Democrats nothing they could plausibly clap about: "He usually tries to at least open with broad vague lines that are 'hard' to not clap for. He's not even trying this time around." She also responded to comments and questions from folks who were following along.
  
  We are very well aware that Bluesky skews leftist/Democratic, and that "people who follow AOC on Bluesky" is a group that skews even more leftist/Democratic. So, she's definitely preaching to the choir here. But you know what? Sometimes the choir needs to be preached to. Particularly when the choir is in the minority. Certainly, we think that a running commentary on social media is getting closer to what the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party wants than snippy auction paddles.

We would like to run some reader responses, perhaps as part of tomorrow's post, so if you watched the speech, and you have a thought or two to share, send a message to comments@electoral-vote.com. If you think we overlooked something we should not have, or we missed the boat on some point we've made, those observations are particularly welcome. (Z)