In today’s newsletter, Susan B. Glasser’s takeaways from the President’s address to Congress. Plus:
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Trump’s Golden Age of Bunk
In a Castro-length speech to Congress, the President claimed victory, while proving that even the most unhinged address can be boring if it goes on long enough.
Susan B. Glasser, writing from Washington, examines Donald Trump’s address to Congress, which was the longest such speech in modern times, and was focussed on a narrative of personal triumph. Here are three main points to consider:
The speech rehashed right-wing culture issues, and glossed over economic uncertainty. The President spoke of a nation refashioned in his image, with “wokeness” defeated, business élites running the government, and long-standing allies reframed as enemies. He only briefly noted that his radical tariff policies might cause “a little disturbance” for American consumers.
Trump’s boasting is undercut by his poll numbers. Trump has the second-lowest favorability rating of any President in our lifetimes at this point in a term (beaten only by himself, in 2017). More important, though, is how polarizing he is—a fact that was in evidence as “half the House chamber applauded rapturously at Trump’s words and half sat stone-faced, looking as if the world had ended.”
The entire spectacle is a gift to America’s adversaries. Trump’s expressions of dominance, and the extreme reactions he inspires on all sides, have unmoored the country. The Democratic Representative Al Green, of Texas, shouted that the President had no mandate to cut Medicaid, and was then escorted from the House chamber when he refused to sit down. Earlier, a Republican congressman ripped a sign reading “This is Not Normal” from the hands of his Democratic colleague and threw it in the air. “Call it the Trump era’s new normal,” Glasser writes, “where members of Congress fight like toddlers on the House floor while Putin gloats over the greatest self-own in modern history.”
The Briefing Room
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