He said it was going to be long. I wasn’t lying.
donald trump told reporters earlier this week that his State of the Union The speech would be “a long speech,” and unlike many of his key campaign promises, the president kept them. He spoke with parliamentarians for 108 minutes on Tuesday, breaking the record he set last year as the longest speech ever given before Congress.
The speech was filled with the necessary presidential greetings to the special guests in the audience. The US men’s hockey team was there, fresh off its first olympic gold medal in almost half a century. So was Erika Kirk, the charlie kirk widow. The president also invited working mothers, military veterans and first responders to attend during the floods that devastated Texas last year. Toward the end of his speech, Trump recognized a 100-year-old Navy pilot before Melania Trump placed the Medal of Honor around his neck. “I always wanted the Congressional Medal of Honor, but I was informed that it cannot be given to me,” said Trump, who also wore a Presidential Medal of Freedom, a Purple Heart and another Medal of Honor during the speech.
However, the basis of Trump’s nearly two hours before Congress was the president’s equally necessary torrent of rantings and falsehoods.
The president claimed to have ended the “DEI”, to have ushered in the “hottest” economy in the history of the United States and to have saved the country from the “scourge” of undocumented immigration. He extolled signature policies that have sunk his popularity across the country and defended his implementation of widespread tariffs that have raised costs for consumers. In the presence of some of the Supreme Court justices, the president rejected a decision published last week in which the court ruled that he had illegally exceeded the limits of his emergency economic powers and usurped the tariff authority granted to Congress by the Constitution.
Although plum measurement approval As for his administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, much of the president’s speech focused on the same kind of immigration scaremongering that defined his 2024 campaign. Americans have been horrified by the brutal tactics of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, 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 immigrants in gory detail, linking them all: regardless of current immigration status of the perpetrator: open borders and democratic politics.
At one point, Trump demanded that politicians “stand up” if they agreed that the US government’s primary role was “to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Of course, the Democratic side of the aisle did not stand up in response to the trick question,” prompting Trump to shout, “You should be ashamed of yourselves if you don’t stand up.”
Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) responded by shouting that Trump himself had violated that principle under the guise of enforcing immigration law. “You’ve killed Americans!” Omar shouted from the audience, referring to the murder of two American citizens: Renée Bueno and Alex Pretti – by ICE agents in his home state of Minnesota. “You should be ashamed,” he added.
Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), who is known for being a disruptive presence in Trump’s State of the Union speeches, he was not heard from… because he was ejected from the chamber shortly after the speech began for holding a sign that read “BLACKS ARE NOT APES,” a reference to a video that Trump recently posted which included a depiction of Barack and Michelle Obama as apes.
Trump translated his obsession with citizenship status into his demand for federal election reform that would disenfranchise millions of eligible American voters but help Republicans win future elections. The president repeated false claims that widespread voter fraud cost him the 2020 election, suggesting this should really be his “third term,” and called on Democrats to help Senate Republicans pass the Safeguarding American Voters Eligibility (SAVE) Act. The bill is a sweeping election reform law that would require Americans to appear in person to provide proof of citizenship when registering to vote, implement national voter ID requirements, sharply restrict voting and registration by mail, and give the federal government unprecedented access and influence over state voter rolls.
“Why would anyone want a voter ID?” Trump said. “One reason: because they want to cheat. There’s only one reason. They make up all the excuses, they say it’s racist, they come up with things that you would almost say no matter how much imagination they had.”
The SAVE Act 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, who do not appear willing to give the president any help before the midterm elections.
Just hours before Trump arrived at the Capitol to address the joint session of Congress, NPR and MS NOW published back-to-back reports indicating that the Trump administration had retained documents related to allegations that Trump sexually abused a minor, including dozens of pages from a series of FBI interviews with the accuser, from Epstein files that the Justice Department has released over the past few months. Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Calif.) says Democrats are investigating allegations that the documents were wrongly withheld.
The revelation sheds even more light on the Epstein-related protests already taking place at the State of the Union. Dozens of Democratic Democrats boycotted the eventa rare event in the history of speech. Some of the Democrats who attended the speech invited survivors of Epstein’s abuse as guests, while others carried pins or held signs drawing 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 overcome the sacrosanct partisan division of seats in the past State of the Unions and they sat together for the event.
Many of those who left the speech attended the “State of the Union People,” a collection of public addresses and speakers held on the National Mall. Lawmakers attending 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-California).
The official rebuttal to the State of the Union was delivered by Virginia’s newly elected governor, Abigail Spanberger, who won an upset election that wrested the state’s governorship from Republicans last year. “Let me ask you, the American people watching at home, three questions,” he 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.
