Reps. David Scott (D-GA) and Tom Suozzi (D-NY) appeared to “doze off” during Donald Trump’s SOTU address.

On our radar this week…

“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” – George Orwell, “1984”

We opened last week’s podcast with those words from Orwell’s prescient dystopian novel. On Tuesday, Donald Trump lived those words in a gibbering, rambling, bitter, divisive, partisan, and lie-filled one-hour 47-minute diatribe. The speech was boycotted by dozens of Democrats … and a majority of the U.S. Supreme Court and, based on the TV ratings, the majority of Americans.

Newly elected Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, in the official Democratic response, summed up Trump in one biting paragraph:

“…who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he’s pushed through this Republican Congress? Somebody must be benefiting. He’s enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There’s the coverup 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. Nations capital. This is not what our founders envisioned. Not by a long shot. So I’ll ask again. Is the president working for you? We all know the answer is no.”

A day later, Governor Whitmer offered her 8th and final State of the State assessment: realistic, grounded in reality, and a reflection of someone whose approval rating is 15 points higher than Trump’s. Multiple polls show a stunning 60+ percent of Americans say Trump sucks while Whitmer’s approval has consistently been in the low-to-mid 50’s.

Whitmer’s speech focused on “kitchen table” issues: affordability, medical debt, housing and literacy. She somehow forgot to label Republicans as “Low IQ”, “Crazy”, “Lunatics” or responsible for all of Michigan’s problems … she didn’t even once blame anything on Rick Snyder … but she did take the opportunity to brag about Michigan athletes dominating the U.S. medal count at the Olympics. And she even high-fived House Speaker MAGA Matt Hall for working collaboratively on sick-time legislation!

The contrasts between those two speeches frame this week’s discussion. Later in the podcast, we are joined by two anti-authoritarian experts to discuss an issue facing many American families and neighbors: how we can talk with each other in this era of often-angry partisan divisions – and why it is critical that we do.

We’ve all been there. Going to the Sunday family dinner that always devolves into a debate about Trump. A few of my extended family members are MAGA to the point where we avoid politics completely. Scrolling through Facebook and encountering that childhood friend whose feed has become a minefield of MAGA memes. For a decade, the conventional wisdom for surviving the American political divide has been “don’t go there.” We’ve treated political topics like radioactive waste—best left buried for the sake of the relationship.

The folks at the Democracy Investment Fund think that silence is costing us more than we realize. Their new free app, LSTN2U, is a bet on a radical idea: that we can actually talk to each other again, provided we stop trying to “win.” LSTN2U isn’t a social media network or a news aggregator. It’s essentially a flight simulator for difficult conversations. The free, nonpartisan app provides a judgment-free digital resource where users can practice realistic dialogue. We’re joined by the two people behind this optimistic approach to politics: my friends Erin Dobson and Trygve Olson.

LSTN2U is a free app: no upsells or hidden fees. Your data is not sold or used commercially.

LSTN2U emphasizes:

Active Listening: Truly hearing the “why” behind someone’s “what.”
Emotional Awareness: Identifying when your own “fight or flight” response is hijacking the logic centers of your brain.
Boundary Setting: Learning how to stay in a conversation without losing your peace of mind—and knowing when it’s OK to step back.

Other issues on our radar this week that, in more normal times, would occupy an entire podcast include

The appearance that Donald “Give Me the Nobel Peace Prize” Trump is on the verge of starting a war with Iran … a war that could rival the Iraq and Afghanistan wars in futility, and further alienate the United States from the world. This comes six months after Trump claimed to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons capabilities. Apparently obliteration has a short shelf life.
The Epstein cover-up became even more evident with the revelation that dozens of documents pointing directly at Trump … including allegations of sexually assaulting a 13-year-old girl … have been hidden by the utterly corrupt Pam Bondi. But Republicans on Capitol Hill are more interested in the Clintons, with Bill and Hillary dragged in front of the House Oversight Committee this week for depositions that will keep the Epstein story in the headlines … but provide little else.
After the Supreme Court told him his tariffs were illegal, Trump doubled down by imposing a 10 percent then 15 percent tariff on all imports. If, as Trump says, those tariffs would replace the federal income tax, it would be a huge financial windfall for the highest income taxpayers … his billionaire buddies, shifting the tax load to low- and middle-income families.