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It's Wednesday, February 25, 2026. I'm Albert Mohler, and this is the Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Well, last night, the State of the Union address by President Donald J. Trump before a joint session of Congress. It was a long one, an hour and 48 minutes. It became the longest recorded State of the Union address in presidential history. And that was President Trump beating his own record because he had set the previous record for a long address. Now, we'll talk more about that in a moment. But the president had indicated that this was going to be a long address. He said he had a lot to say, and he did have a lot to say. But there are a couple of things we need to notice. First of all, let's put it in the historical context before we look at this speech. Let's just remind ourselves of the State of the Union address and what it means. This is a constitutional requirement, not that the president speak before a joint session of Congress, but the president constitutionally, is to report from time to time on the State of the Union report to Congress. And so in times past, there have been presidents who tried not to do it in person. You can consider the example of Thomas Jefferson. You also, nonetheless, in the modern presidency, not only have the president delivering the address in person, but using it as a major platform to speak to the American people, particularly once radio and television came along. Now, of course, with digital media, all the more so. Another thing to note is that there is formality and decorum, but as I said on the video yesterday, when you look at the State of the Union address, it's not just a precedent in American history, which means that Congress must invite the President of the United States to deliver an address before a joint session of Congress. It goes all the way back to the reign of Charles I in England, when King Charles I burst into Parliament, sat in the Speaker's chair and eventually paid with his life after the English Civil War. So we are talking about very high stakes. So when the king or the queen, when the monarch in Great Britain, speaks before Parliament, the monarch does it by Parliament's invitation, a formality with the official known as Black Rod. Going back to that history in the United States, it is one of the officers of the House, usually the sergeant at arms or a deputy, who announces, ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States. And you will notice that presiding over the entire thing is the speaker of the House. So it was the speaker of Parliament in Britain. Now it's the speaker of the House. When you are looking at the model of the United States. Now the formality is out of the way. Let's look at the politics. And in order to understand that, we need to see that the State of the Union Address has become not only a political event, but not only the fulfillment of a constitutional provision. It has become what is rightly defined as performance art. Performance art is when you have something happen, and it involves stagecraft and projection, that is to go over the audience right there before the speaker and go out for a far larger public audience. And so performance art is also just about performing something in. In order that the performance itself becomes the artifact of art. In any event, it was performance art. The President was performed. Now, here's something very interesting. This is a first for the presidency. We're talking about a president, both the 45th and the 47th president of the United States, who was indeed very skilled and experienced in performance before being elected President of the United States, before even becoming a major political figure or presidential candidate. This has to do with the fact that he became very accustomed to television cameras. He hosted a television program. He was well known in the media. Not only does he not dislike it, in one sense, he's a natural when it comes to the television. He attracts attention, and he holds that attention. Now, when it came to the length of the address last night, I don't think he held the nation's attention to consistently for an hour and 48 minutes. Now, before we accuse the President of speaking for an hour and 48 minutes, we do need to recognize that the performance art goes in multiple ways. And so now Congress, which was just the audience, now also turns out to be, to some degree, actors and actresses themselves, because the camera keeps panning them and they keep performing for the camera. Now, some of them were misbehaving, some of them were boisterous in giving their support for the President's points. And of course, this meant that you had lots of applause. That meant breaks for applause. You also had standing ovations. That meant the time it takes for standing ovations. I don't know how to do the math in reducing all of that down to speaking time. But in any event, it is simply a fact somehow. A fact. I think human biology, physiology at least, has something to do with it. It is very difficult to pay consistent attention to a speech that lasts anything like an hour and 48 minutes. And the President certainly knows that. But he's very accustomed to doing this on the campaign trail at his rallies. He has often given some of the longest speeches that Journalists and other observers have ever seen, they've ever experienced very long speeches. The President seems to believe that when it comes to a speech like that, more is better. But I think when you look at the historic significance of this address, oftentimes more doesn't turn out to be better, better doesn't turn out to be more. Instead, there's some kind of happy medium. But you know what? It is now a fact of history, this State of the Union address. As the Nation observe its 250th anniversary as a nation going back to independence, it becomes very clear that this president did what he went there to do. I think it's safe to say that last night he left the US Capitol rather satisfied with what he had done, is what he went there to do. Okay, so in the stagecraft, there is also, even in the performance art, there are some real matters of consequence. And for one thing, the President gets to invite guests. Now Congress gets to invite guests, at least some members of Congress. This has to do with seniority and other issues. But. But the White House certainly gets to invite guests. You'll notice that the seating ran out. So in a way that was not common to State of the Union addresses. The President would make reference to people, including the U.S. olympic men's hockey team, that had to walk into the room and be recognized, one of them to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and then for all of them to leave. And then there were others who came in, and some of them with more or less historic consequence. But the fact is, the chamber was absolutely full, and that meant the balcony was full as well. But in the event last night, there were several parts that were particularly significant. And the bipartisan, patriotic parts are very important. But the presentation, not just of one, but two of the Congressional Medals of Honor, that turned out to be very significant. And in both cases, the audience was pretty clear that this was a significant occasion. One of them had to do with a military pilot who was absolutely instrumental in the US Military effort to arrest Nicolas Maduro and extricate him from Venezuela into U.S. custody. It turns out that it was known after the military action that this particular pilot had been very severely wounded, but he continued with the mission. And that's exactly what the President honored last night. Even as I'm speaking to you now, we do not have a complete transcript of the event, but nonetheless, it's now a matter of history. We also have the fact that There was a 100-year-old retired Navy captain who had seen action, multiple occasions of action, vast military experience in combat in more than one war. But beginning with World War II, he was also given the Congressional Medal of Honor. It was very moving to see 100-year-old man sitting there with the first Lady, Melania Trump, and seeing him stand with his captain's stripes on his uniform and all those recognitions there on his uniform, and then see the Medal of Honor put around his neck by the first lady herself. That was a very moving occasion. Looking at that Navy captain's face, the face of a man who is 100 years old being recognized at that point in his life for such military distinction for the United States of America. That was one of those moments that I hope Americans were watching carefully. All right, there were some other aspects of the president's address. Almost every time a president in the modern age gives a State of the Union address, he plays towards the policies that he is seeking to advance. And so he mentioned, for example, the Republican bill to require voter identification for elections. He was very clear about that. He pushed other issues of the current Trump administration agenda. That's why presidents do this the way they do it. That is absolutely normal. It is also absolutely normal to try to position your administration if you're the president in a way that identifies with the American people at the expense of the opposing party. That's just part of the political context, but it's one that the British people are far more accustomed to seeing or hearing or knowing about than Americans. So in the House of Commons in Britain, the throwing back and forth of all kinds of arguments, yelling, interrupting, and all of that in parliamentary debate, that's quite normal. In the United States context, it has not been normal, at least as Americans have observed it. And so if you just look at, I think of historic addresses of a president to a joint session of Congress, historic State of the Union addresses, et cetera. It's fairly recent that you have catcalls and other kinds of interruptions. It's fairly recent that the partisanship shows as extremely as it does now. And I simply will say, I think that some of it did not serve the president in pressing his case and in winning the sympathies of the American people. President Trump takes his arguments and then he presses on further. And I think it's something about the American character. There are some people who love to see those kinds of insults and critical statements thrown. There are a lot of Americans, however, who want to know what the lines of conflict are, but they want to keep it not so personally involved. And so that's just what was happening. But you know what the Democrats made it personal themselves. Let me tell you how the Democrats made it personal. Before the president entered the chamber, it was seen in the fact that, by some estimates, about half of the Democrats who are in Congress were not in the room. They basically boycotted President Trump's State of the Union address. I'm going to state number one. I think that is not constitutionally right. I think that's an insult to the constitutional order. I do not think it serves their constituents. Their constituents elected them to function as members of Congress, either as representatives in the House or as senators there in the Senate. They were elected to be there. And I think functionally, frankly, the Democrats really made a huge mistake. And for one thing, they allowed the President of the United States of the opposing party they were seeking to try to undermine. Instead, they allowed him to enter into the House chamber to nearly unanimous applause. And so, you know, President Trump knew exactly what he was doing. He knew exactly what they were doing. And President Trump, well, he took advantage of exactly what was handed to him on a platter. By the way, when we're talking about the length of the address, by some counts, the address by President Trump last night beat the record previously set by former President Bill Clinton in the year 2000. We're talking about some very interesting comparisons here, but the point is that there are parts of any of these addresses that are memorable and other parts that are not all that memorable. The president knew to put in some moments with particular emotional punch. He also threw some punches, and it's clear he went into the room to do just that. But, you know, when you look at what the President said in terms of policy, there were very few surprises. So let's just think about this for a moment. Did the President of the United States last night say anything that was fundamentally a surprise? I think the answer to that is no. Did the President of the United States last night even really give us much of an indication of what he is thinking in terms of strategy? Given some of the challenges America now faces around the world, particularly looking at the situations in Iran and the war in Ukraine, the president actually, on those things, gave us no details about future plans. What did President Trump do last night that no other president of the United States has ever done? And why do I think it is so historically significant? It is because, going back to his second inaugural address just over a year ago, President Trump became the first president of the United States to make very clear that for his administration, there will be two and only two genders, male and female, and he defined them biologically I love the footnote that came in the White House text, and that is the male is the human with the small reproductive cell and the female is the human with the large reproductive cell. If you've got to say that the world's broken, but on this issue, let's face it, the world's broken. And you know what? That brokenness showed up last night. But clarity also showed up last night. Last night, President Trump became the first President of the United States to reference gender transition. And that's what they call it, or gender affirmation. Even more diabolically, that's what they call it. This means genital mutilation surgery, so called sex reassignment surgery, or before the surgery, even hormone treatments. The President came out very clearly against this and he did so with reference to a young woman who was with her mother in the chamber. The President made reference to Sage Blair, who he eventually had stand up with her mother, and referred to the fact that When Sage was 14, school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Then the President said, hard to believe, isn't it? Before long, a confused Sage ran away from home. The President continued, after she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son. The President continued, sage was thrown into an all boys state home and suffered terribly for a long time. But today all of that is behind them because Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full ride scholarship to Liberty University. So all that was in what the President said. And there's a whole world of meaning and significance and truth in what the President said. He became the first President of the United States, number one, to say something like this, but in a context in which in one sense, he was the first President of the United States who was not a Democrat for this, when anyone knew to talk about this. Previous Democratic administrations, especially the Obama and Biden administrations, basically have been all in on these treatments. But as we talked about on the briefing, so were major medical associations and other groups. There has been a turn on that in at least some medical circles. But there's also been some return to sanity. We owe to President Trump the fact that he drew direct attention to, to this issue. And he went on and described it, he spoke to this young woman and her mother saying, thank you for your great bravery and who can believe that we're even speaking about things like this? Okay, that was one of the best questions the President could have asked. Who can believe that we're even speaking about things like this? And then he went on to say, 15 years ago, somebody was up here and said that they'd say, what's wrong with him? But now we have to say it's because it's going on all over numerous dates without even telling the parents. Okay, so there are multiple issues the President invoked here. But most importantly, it is the wrongness of this kind of surgery or these kinds of treatments, period. Either the surgery or the surgery with hormonal treatments, or either one independent of the other, just wrong. When it comes to teenagers, you even have major groups like the American Medical association and the Guild of Plastic Surgeons coming back to say there is no evidence of that would justify the use of these kinds of procedures, especially surgical procedures when it comes to children and teenagers. But the President said something else. He said that it's wrong when these children and young people are treated by the state without reference to their parents, without the permission of parents, and in some cases, without the ability of parents to intervene, and in some cases, without the ability of parents even to know. But, okay, here's where things get even more interesting. So I mentioned that there is a lack of decorum, and that comes with a cost. But, you know, at times, I just want to say this as carefully as I can. At times, the decorum would itself be a part of the problem. The President saw when there were those who stood and applauded for this young woman and her courage. There were major Democrats. As a matter of fact, the President said none of the Democrats stood and applauded. And the President then turned to the camera, he turned to the audience, and that means he turned to the American people and said, these people are crazy. I'm telling you, they're crazy. End quote. And on that, I just want to say, Mr. President, you're right. On moral issues, I also want to at least recognize the President mentioned IVF in vitro fertilization and did so in a positive context. I think that's very problematic. We've talked about that before. But the President did mention it. And so I just want to note, historically, he did. So it's going to be very interesting to see the response to the State of the Union address. I will say that last night, the immediate response on the part of the media was, I think, almost 100% predictable. The response went exactly along the lines that you might expect. I do think it's going to be very interesting to see how the media over the next couple of days, how they respond to, especially the issue of Sage Blair. It's only very interesting to see how they respond to it. I don't think they're going to be able to offer no response. I think they're gonna have to say something. And that's because that party, the Democratic Party, is now so captive to the LGBTQ movement. I think that movement is going to demand some kind of response. It's gonna be very interesting to see. We'll be watching it. We'll talk about it when it happens. By the way, just an interesting little footnote here. I mentioned the length of the speech, and the interesting thing is that you have to say that in recent history, he achieved the longest speech. You'd have to say that, of course, Bill Clinton's in that modern history. Why can we only say that much? It's because no one was counting minutes. If you go back very far in American history, there are sometimes texts you can look at and you say, well, that wouldn't have taken anywhere near that long. But just as a matter of being factual and accurate, no one knows exactly how long those addresses were went. We'll just leave it at that. Now, speaking about these issues, I want to shift to England, where the Spectator offered a very interesting report just last week. Listen to this. Here's the report. Quote, pupils will be allowed to change gender at school according to guidance issued by Bridget Phillipson, the Education Secretary. Parents would be consulted unless there was a safeguarding reason not to, and children would have their preferred pronouns used in the classroom. However, children older than eight will still have to use facilities according to their biological sex. It's just crazy, Just absolutely crazy. We are told that a High Court judge dismissed a challenge to the Equality and Human Rights Commission's guidance last April that single sex lavatories or changing rooms should be used by people of the same biological sex. Okay, so what's going on here? Well, we're across the Atlantic, but the same issues making headlines, and the complete policy appears not to be in place. But due to this kind of legal requirement, they are stipulating that a child over age 8 has to be in the facilities assigned to the biological sex. Okay, let's just say that makes sense. It just doesn't make sense that you'd have to say it. But then you go back to this particular qualification. We're told that pupil students are going to be allowed to change gender at school. And we're told that the Education Secretary in the labor government, very liberal government there, has issued this policy. This part is really crucial. Parents are listening to this quote. Parents would be consulted unless there was a safeguarding reason not to. Okay, so there. Who's making the decision about whether or not there is a safeguarding issue? Let me just state. The very officials who are pushing this, who are pushing this identity and pushing this agenda. This. They're the very people who are most likely to say the parents are the problem. The parents are posing an obstacle here. And this also means that if parents don't go along enthusiastically with this change in gender identity at school, I think there's every reason to believe they're going to be declared as no longer acting in the best interest of their child. And we've seen that kind of thing happen, both in terms of threat and reality. In the United States. There's pushback in recent years, but right now what we see is that this liberal government, it's officially a labor government there in Britain, is pushing this kind of leftist policy. And by the way, that's what they stood for. And the same political reality is present here in the United States. And that's the reason why you didn't have Democrats, according to the President, not a single Democrat who stood up to recognize the courage of this young woman who resisted the movement. It's going to be very interesting to see just over the next couple of years. It's going to be very interesting to see this year in the midterm elections how this issue functions. And, you know, there are people who say, you know, conservatives are just immovable on this issue. We are immovable because of ontological reality, because of biology, because of fact. But the Democrats are certainly in lockstep, largely under the control of the left wing of that movement. And it's going to be very interesting to see if there are many Democrats, if any, who are going to have the courage to stand over against it. If so, they'll find themselves in a very interesting position. And this takes us back to the 1980s, when the Democratic Party really moved so far left on the abortion issue. And eventually you would have someone like Bill Casey, who was the Democratic governor of the state of Pennsylvania, let's just state one of the most important swing states in any election. He was not allowed to address the Democratic National Convention as far back as decades ago because he refused to join the Democratic Party's pro abortion position. So that's exactly where that party is on the LGBTQ issues. And remember that plus sign there will be movement. But unless there's some fundamental reordering of things, it's going to be movement. Further left. Well, there we have it. And it'll also be very interesting to see the response to the, say, the union address and other developments. Let's just say headlines breaking in days to come. Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website@albertmuller.com you can follow me on Twitter or X by going to x.comalbertmuller or for information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu. for information on Boyce College, just go to boycecollege. Com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.