Medals, Fearmongering, Arguing With Dems

He said it was going to be long. He wasn’t lying.

Donald Trump told reporters earlier this week that his State of the Union address would be “a long speech,” and unlike with many of his key campaign promises, the president delivered. He spoke to lawmakers for 108 minutes on Tuesday, breaking the record he set last year for the longest speech ever delivered to Congress.

The speech was filled with the requisite presidential shoutouts to special guests in the audience. The U.S. men’s hockey team was there, fresh off their first Olympic gold medal in almost half a century. So was Erika Kirk, the widow of Charlie Kirk. The president also nodded to attending working moms, military veterans, and first responders to the floods that ravaged Texas last year. Trump toward the end of his speech recognized a 100-year-old Navy pilot before Melania Trump fastened the Medal of Honor around his neck. “I’ve always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was informed I’m not allowed to give it to myself,” said Trump, who also doled out a Presidential Medal of Freedom, Purple Heart, and another Medal of Honor during the address.

The foundation of the nearly two hours Trump stood before Congress, however, was the president’s just-as-requisite torrent of ravings and falsehoods.

The president claimed to have ended “DEI,” ushered in the “hottest” economy in American history, and saved the country from the “scourge” of undocumented immigration. He extolled the signature policies that have tanked his popularity across the country, defending his implementation of widespread tariffs that have driven up costs for consumers. In the presence of some of the Supreme Court justices, the president dismissed a decision released last week in which the court ruled that he had unlawfully exceeded the bounds of his emergency economic powers and usurp tariff authority granted to Congress by the Constitution. 

Despite plummeting approval over his administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, much of the president’s speech focused on the same kind of immigration fear mongering that defined his 2024 campaign. Americans have been horrified by Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s brutal tactics, and Trump seemed to be trying to convince the nation that immigrants, the real enemy, are here to kill you and your families. He described a series of violent crimes committed by undocumented migrants in gory detail, linking them all — regardless of the actual immigration status of the perpetrator — to open borders and Democratic policy. 

At one point, Trump demanded that lawmakers “stand up” if they agreed that the primary role of the American government was to “protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Of course, the Democratic side of the aisle did not stand up in response to the loaded question,” prompting Trump to shout, “You should be ashamed of yourselves, not standing up.”

Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) shouted back in response that Trump himself had broken that principle under the guise of immigration enforcement. “You have killed Americans!” Omar shouted from the audience, referencing the killing of two American citizens — Renee Good and Alex Pretti — by ICE agents in her home state of Minnesota. “You should be ashamed,” she added.

Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who is known to be a disruptive presence at Trump’s State of the Union addresses, wasn’t heard from … because he was kicked out of the chamber shortly after the speech started for holding up a sign that read “BLACK PEOPLE AREN’T APES,” a reference to a video Trump posted recently that included a depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.

Trump translated his obsession with citizenship status into his demand for federal electoral reform that would disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters, but help Republicans win future elections. The president repeated false claims that widespread election fraud cost him the 2020 election — suggesting that this should really be his “third term” — and called for Democrats to aid Senate Republicans in passing the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The bill is a sprawling election reform law that would require Americans to appear in-person to present proof of citizenship when they register to vote, implement national voter ID requirements, heavily restrict mail-in voting and registration, and give the federal government unprecedented access and influence on state voter rolls. 

“Why would anybody not want voter ID?” Trump said. “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 had.”

The SAVE Act has passed the House, but needs a 60-vote majority to pass the Senate, and is unlikely to succeed without the support of a significant portion of the Democratic minority, which does not seem inclined to provide the president any boon ahead of the midterms.

Just hours before Trump arrived at the Capitol to address the joint session of Congress, NPR and MS NOW released back-to-back reports indicating that the Trump administration had withheld documents related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor — including dozens of pages from a series of FBI interviews with the accuser — from the Epstein files the Justice Department has released over the last several months. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) says Democrats are investigating the allegations that the documents were wrongfully withheld.

The revelation cast an even brighter spotlight on the Epstein-related protests already taking place at the State of the Union. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers boycotted the event, a rare occurrence in the speech’s history. Some of the Democrats attending the speech invited survivors of Epstein’s abuse as their guests, while others wore pins or held signs calling attention to the scandal. Reps. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) and Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), both leading figures in the congressional push for transparency related to the Epstein case, have bridged the sacrosanct partisan seating divide of past State of the Unions and sat together for the event. 

Many of those who ditched the address instead attended the “People’s State of the Union,” a collection of public speeches and speakers held on the National Mall. Lawmakers who attended the event included Sens. Chris Murphy (D-Ct.), Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.), Ed Markey (D-Mass.), Jeff Merkley (D-Ore.), and Tina Smith (D- Minn.), as well as Reps. Greg Casar (D-Texas), Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.), and Robert Garcia (D-Calif.).

The official rebuttal to the State of the Union was delivered by recently elected Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, who won an upset election that snatched the state’s governorship away from Republicans last year. “Let me ask you, the American people watching at home, three questions,” she said. “Is the president working to make life more affordable for you and your family? Is the president working to keep Americans safe, both at home and abroad? Is the president working for you?” 

“We all know the answer is no,” Spanberger said.