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- [00:04]
A
Hope for the best, expect the worst. Some drink champagne, Some die at first the way of knowing which way it's going. Hope for the best. Expect the worst, hope for the best. Welcome to the Commentary magazine daily podcast. Today is Wednesday, February 25, 2026. I am Jon Podhoritz, the editor of Commentary magazine. With me is always executive editor Abe Greenwald. Hi, Abe.
- [00:36]
B
Hi, John.
- [00:38]
A
Senior editor Seth Mandel. Hi, Seth.
- [00:40]
C
Hi, John.
- [00:41]
A
Washington Free Beacon editor Eliana Johnson. Hi, Eliana.
- [00:45]
D
Hi, John.
- [00:46]
A
And Commentary's Social Commentary columnist, Christine Rosen. Hi, Christine.
- [00:50]
E
Hi, John. I'm curious what your shirt says.
- [00:53]
A
My shirt says it's a shirt from the Reagan Ranch.
- [00:58]
E
Oh, okay.
- [00:59]
A
So the Reagan Ranch, the run by the Reagan foundation and the Young Americans foundation, which is one of the great experiences of my life, going to the Reagan Ranch, which is not open to the public and, and is not a kind of a difficult thing to get access to very quickly. Reagan Ranch is like, sits atop, is like above Santa Barbara. It's like 45 minutes up the side of a mountain up to Santa Barbara. And driving up there to the site of the ranch is one of the most harrowing and terrifying experiences that any human being could ever have. And I don't think that my wife, Ayala, has yet recovered from the experience of being driven up the side of this switch on these switch on the switchback road. And you get up there and it's an astoundingly modest house. That's the, the great secret of it. It's like 800-900-square feet. It is not anything like you could possibly imagine. If you could imagine the opposite of the White House ballroom, you would get the, the new White House. Well, you would get the Reagan Ranch. Anyway, that is what my shirt.
- [02:17]
E
Thank you.
- [02:17]
A
And it's an amazing American landmark and it would be wonderful if people could get to see it, but they need to protect that. You can't. It's too small a site for it to be like a major tourist attraction. And you can go to the Reagan Library in Simi Valley. Anyway, that's my story. And of course, Reagan delivered seven states of the Union. Trump delivered his first State of the Union official state union of his second presidential term last night. An hour and 48 minutes. And we're going to unpack it today. So I, I see five different subjects areas to cover. So the first is the speech as television spectacle and how, how it was might have come across to the people watching across the country. One thing we know from the last 15 years is that people who don't like the president in power tend not to watch the State of the Union. So the audience is self selecting for fans. And so the ratings are usually extraordinarily high. The approval ratings are high because the audience is not, you know, sort of in general. There was a time when everybody in America would watch it. Now that's just not the case anymore. So the CNN Insta poll Afterward had it 64% of people approved like the speech. But the question is whether that means anything. And I think it does. But simply as a two hour television show, what grade would you guys give the show? So why don't we do like a, like a light? I would.
- [04:20]
B
A minus.
- [04:22]
A
Okay, an A minus from Abe. Seth, where would you go?
- [04:25]
C
I give him a B as a show.
- [04:28]
A
Okay, Eliana?
- [04:32]
D
I'm going to give it a B plus. It was too long.
- [04:37]
A
And Christine, I was going to say,
- [04:39]
E
because if we're talking television, it went way too long. I would say B. B minus. I'll say B. I'll be an easy grader.
- [04:47]
A
Much to my astonishment, I'm going to go close to an A. And very quickly, here's why. Forty years ago, Reagan innovated at the State of the Union by introducing Lenny Skutnik. Lenny Skutnik was a man who was standing on the 14th Street Bridge in Washington when a plane went into the Potomac. And without thinking, he literally leapt into the freezing waters of the Potomac to see if he could help rescue people who were, who had crashed into the water. He became known as the man in the water. And either in the 84 or the 85 state of the Union. Reagan said, you know, Americans, ordinary Americans can be heroes just like anybody. And here is Lenny Skutnik and introduced him and the camera cut to Lenny Skutnik and there was huge applause. That was the first time that we got the ordinary American in the gallery being introduced. So it's now 41, it's now four decades later and now this is the show. This was the who's going to be introduced from the gallery show. And I think there were, aside from the, of course the Olympic hockey team, the male men's Olympic hockey team. There were at least eight introductions, maybe more of people in the gallery who were illustrating points from the speech and featuring surprise entrances with the doors opening to the gallery and people marching down the stairs.
- [06:32]
C
The first come on down.
- [06:33]
E
I think he said, yeah, right.
- [06:37]
A
And you know what? I, it worked. I, I don't know. Like there was a show on TV in the 1950s called Queen for a Day and the Secret of Queen for a day, which is why this is analogous to what happened here was somebody would be surprised to find themselves on television and would be highlighted and people from their lives would show and you know, they would cry and all of that. And usually it was a sob story. It was somebody who had lived a terrible, terrible life or something tragic had happened and then you sort of like learned their tragedy and then everybody cried and then, and then shoot and then the person, this woman would be queen for a day. And the entire, was this exhibitionistic sob story thing. And of course like half the people who were introduced by Trump were in that position Mother, you know, to a mother of a murdered, of the murdered woman on the Charlotte mass transit train. The, you know, there were like the wounded guy whose mother never, you know, never thought wouldn't give up on him even when the doctor said he would never survive. The amazing story of the pilot, helicopter pilot who, whose legs were ruined in the, in the landing in Venezuela and nonetheless managed to fly for 30 minutes before passing out and handing the controls over to somebody else getting the, getting the Medal of Honor. A hundred year old man getting the medal of Honor, all of that. Like so there was, there were these sort of tear drenched like heart rending stories and then there was the good, the good new, the good feeling ones like the, particularly the, the medal of the hockey team. And I think every time the speech started to flag and he started going into one of these people, it kind of perked up again because it wasn't about him anymore. It wasn't about him and the Democrats. It wasn't about, it was like suddenly like reading a newspaper feature article about an ordinary person living through extraordinary circumstances done like every 10 minutes. So never quite seen anything like it before. And, and that alone I think made it a unique speech. Like it's kind of going to be
- [09:13]
B
memorable the, the Trump Awards almost, you know.
- [09:16]
A
Yeah, exact. No, exactly. It was exactly like the Trump and, and with, with awards.
- [09:21]
E
Right?
- [09:22]
A
So he gave out, he gave out a Medal of Freedom. And I want to talk about this for a minute with Seth because of the hockey issue. Medal of freedom and then two Medals of Honor, right to two different heroes. One this 100-year-old pilot and the other this grievously wounded helicopter pilot who had been in the, in the Venezuela strike. And, and then, and then he brought. Come on down. The uncle of imprisoned Venezuelan activist released from jail so that he could see his niece again hugging in the gallery. So it's like you get an uncle and you get an Uncle. And you get an uncle. And so it was shameless. It was kind of, like, weird. That particular moment was weird. But, you know, if television is about novelty now and live events are the things that get people, like, people are like, my God, this is happening live. So sports are popular and all this, and ordinary programming is not. It kind of set a new bar for this kind of game.
- [10:37]
B
John, I just want to say that I'm surprised that you have four other or three other angles to discuss about the State of the Union, because for me, truthfully, because for me, the spectacle, the television spectacle, was the overarching story here in that, you know, everything Trump touches, especially every institution, he changes the nature of it, you know, and he. It wasn't only the awards that he turned into the Trump Awards, that, to me, made it this television spectacle, sort of WrestleMania megachurch kind of event. But also. I'm sure we'll get to this in another context. He always breaks the fourth wall. Trump and people. It disarms people, but it sort of takes them by surprise, and he makes things more interesting for good and ill that way. And so, you know, the other thing that got me was this whole, you know, we always tune in to see who stands for what right, who stands for what line. So Trump just says, this is the breaking of the fourth wall. Stand if. Stand. If you believe that the. The first duty of elected officials is to serve the American citizens and not legal immigrants, we can get into the political.
- [12:10]
A
Yeah.
- [12:11]
B
Blows or not of that. But just that moment, too, to me, changed the nature of State of the Union going forward, because it's. The game is now out in the open, you know, in a way, and I have to say, it's been the Democrats in opposition who have been pushing this night towards spectacle for years. They've been showing up in coordinated outfits holding signs. Nancy Pelosi has been theatrically ripping up. Ripping it ripped up, the Trump speech. They've been objecting and jeering. So Trump is like, that's the game. This is a game I can play. You know, you want to turn this into a spectacle, then let's. So, to me, the whole thing was a fascinating event above all else.
- [13:02]
A
Okay, so. Oh, El, I thought.
- [13:06]
D
I really liked the speech, even though I was, you know, it was going so well, I was eager for him to kind of wrap it up. But I thought the speech was successful for a few reasons, the first of which was the showmanship of it all. And I think it was important that it was bookended on the front by the entrance of the hockey players who came in at the top and at the bottom by the giving out of the Medal of Honor to two people. One was a hundred year old member of Gen Z, this hero from the Korean War, sorry, of the greatest generation hero from the Korean War. And the other a member of Gen Z which itself were these bookends hero from the Maduro raid. And for me, I thought the speech was a success because if you are a normal person, it left you feeling good and positive about America, which is kind of the point about speech. The state of our union is strong. And then the overall theme was America at 250. And he said in the closing the golden age of America is upon us. The flame of liberty and independence still burns in the heart of every American patriot. And the hockey team at the front and. And the two Medal of Honor winners at the end drew on those themes. The other points which are not unimportant are he hit three things that I think were important. One, and I have some criticisms of how he did it, but nonetheless he did it. One, the bulk of the speech was focused on the economy and immigration. We can get into the specifics of that if you want some criticisms of the way he talked about the economy. He refocused the immigration message away from the fiasco in Minneapolis and back towards the issue of criminal illegal migrants, as Abe pointed out. And when he did that, he said stand if you stand with the American people against criminal illegal migrants in a moment that I think will be used in attack ads against Democrats in districts. And I think the president was highly conscious of that. And third, he made a public case for potential military action against Iran. I have some criticisms of the way he did that too, but I think basically overall those were some really important, you know, in a broad overview, it was a major success. I liked it.
- [16:03]
A
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- [19:15]
E
So I'll push back a little bit. I agree about the bookends, but I think in the middle we had the troll, as we always do with Trump, and I wasn't proud to have a president be so debasing in his language, even when discussing the opposition, because I think he, you know, he had this stunt ready, like the stand. If you, if you believe this, or he knew they wouldn't stand. He was being heckled obnoxiously by Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. And I think it would have been a better presentation if he just let, let the American people see how the Democratic opposition acts. But he kind of couldn't resist that, that sort of name calling that he always does. So I didn't like that. I will say on the economic points, I think there was a real mission that I'm sure Susie Wiles and a lot of congressional Republicans wanted. And it's, I think of it like the Tammy Wynette moment, like the stand by your man moment. He kind of wanted to make, make sure that the Republicans understood that they needed to stand with him on this economic message, which was disciplined, as Eliana says. He didn't start riffing or start, you know, criticizing the idea that affordability is a concern of Americans. But he got some of his boastfulness about what he's done and accomplished already.
- [20:20]
A
Wrong.
- [20:21]
E
Coffee, ground beef, the prices of some of the things he was rattling off. He didn't mention coffee, actually said poultry. Poultry and ground beef. Prices are up. Other thing, rent is still up. Some energy prices are still up. Now he has. There have been price drops on other things that are in people's weekly budgets. And I think the, you know, the inflation information, I think him promoting the tax cuts coming to people's wallets in April. So those are all good indicators. But I still would have liked to have seen a little more acknowledgement of the uncertainty and pain that American, some Americans are still feeling about the economy. So I don't think he totally agree with that.
- [20:57]
D
I think he's constitutionally incapable of doing that. And I think his, his message that this is a turnaround for the ages and the economy is roaring again, it's not going to land with the voters. He really needs to bring along midterms.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah, I mean, the problem is fundamentally a. He's trying to convince them to change the vibe. Right. He wants them to feel a different vibe. The problem is it's not just that they feel the vibe. The economy didn't grow any further faster in 2025 than it had grown in 2024. A lot of that is due to the tariffs that he then celebrated. And we are not the hottest country in the. I mean, I don't know who's hotter, but I mean, maybe we're the hottest country in the world, but America's.
- [21:50]
E
What does that even mean? Like, what is his definition of hotness? That was my question.
- [21:54]
A
You know, it's like the Velvet Road. It's hard to get in now. 00 entries. So, you know, it's like the velvet rope is, is. Is now, you know, a velvet wall without a beautiful door. But so, so that thing where you try to create the reality distortion field by saying there's never been a recovery like this before. I was handed the worst situation in American history, blah, blah, blah, that, that's not true. And people lie all the time and politicians lie all the time, but you can't make people feel differently. Like you can hand people who want to agree with you or who need like little pieces of little debating points so that around the water cooler or whatever, whatever functions now as the virtual water cooler, you can hand them little bits of. So they can get into arguments on social media with people. But you can't change the hearts of people who are like, I'm nervous, I'm worried. I mean, it'll help if they really like the speech and they think the country is in good hands and that things are looking up. A speech like this can maybe help mitigate some of the anxiety of.
- [23:08]
E
But not when he's saying beef is beef prices are low. Beef prices are up like 15%. Like, I go to the supermarket every week. Beef is expensive. It's getting more expensive. People know this. That's a real experience they have. And so him telling him that that's not true, but in fact it's. He's fixed that problem. That's Biden esque.
- [23:24]
A
So there were, there were, there were moments. And this is him, like he lies or he, or he believes things that are not true because he's creating a narrative in which the ultimate thing in his mind is true, which is he's the greatest president ever and everything that he does is good. And that therefore in service of that larger truth that he believes he's allowed to play fast, loose with the details. That's what he thinks and that's the game that he plays. And I think that's a problem. And where the speech fails, and I think, for example, on tariffs, he was calm. Like, the interesting thing is he said the Supreme Court decision was unfortunate and it was an unfortunate decision. He didn't say, you're all you got, why don't you leave? You're all in the service of a foreign power. Like he said on Friday to the four members of the Supreme Court who were in the front row. But he was calm and he said, we're still going to impose them. And what's more people are going to agree to the tariff rates that I set last year because they know what I'm going to do with the powers that the Supreme Court itself says I can use. I'm going to make it worse. So they're going to agree.
- [24:47]
E
I have to add a point of order. I have to add a point of order that his own administration, administration, in arguing the tariff case, took off the table, said, we know that this would. It's like section 233 or so I forget the actual name. What he's now saying he'll use as his power to reassert tariff power from the executive branch, his own government argued was not possible for him to use. So they're just, yes, they're just grasping at straws.
- [25:11]
A
John Sauer, the Solicitor General, said, we're going with the emergency act because the other acts don't apply. And then he said, no, no, the other. Then on Friday, he said, the other acts apply. So this emergency power I can use for 150 days, which would then be followed up by another act that would allow it to be more permanent. He's now activating. And Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, has said this. But what's interesting is we can have this substantive debate about what he said and what's a lie and what's not a lie. The tariffs are unpopular. People don't like the tariffs. He, this is the one consistent thing in his entire career as an adult, not just in, not just in politics, but in real estate, in life. This is something that he has believed since he was a child and for some reason and said, you know, tariffs are so great, they're going to replace the income tax system. Because, of course, tariffs before there were, before the income tax was imposed in 1913, the only way the federal government could raise money was with tariffs. So you had, you know, you had the Port of New York being, you know, the place that supplied, I don't know, 40% of the money to operate the federal government with. We now have a $30 trillion economy.
- [26:34]
E
We didn't all read the little tariff that could book as a child, as Donald J. Trump did. I mean, it's. No, it's his own administration, though, enabling this idea that it's possible, which is what you're supposed to have a cabinet that has some people in it who can say, okay, we got to shift course now. It can't just.
- [26:49]
A
Yeah, but then he'll fire them. My point is this is his deepest. He doesn't believe in anything but this. He believes in, like he believes in it, and he's not going to let it go. Polling tells him he should let it go. This was a real possibility, a moment of time at which he could have moved on. He could have delivered an entire State of the Union, which he didn't mention. Tariffs, the way he delivered an entire State of the Union, which he didn't mention. China, our foremost adversary on the planet. The first time in 30 years that no State of the Union has mentioned America's relationship with China. He left it out. He could have left it out, he could have moved on from it. He is like, he is not going to let this go and it's kind of self destructive, but okay. That's why I wanted to move on to the other. So substantively, the speech had many problems, and those are the problems of the Trump administration. Substance, as I would say. You know, like, he's praising Elizabeth Warren's effort to block people from buying and selling stock if they're in Congress and he's fixing drug prices and he's doing all kinds of things that are, you know, sort of like anathematic to conventional conservative economic thinking, but there it is. So, you know, substantively it's the same problem supporting his own corporatist, weird mercantilist agenda, which we don't support. But given that's who he is and he's holding tight, then you have to, then you evaluate the speech as we started here, almost as a performance, you know, as a, as a, like, as a TV show. So as a TV show. Eliana, you mentioned the stand up if you support Americans or you, or you want to sell the country to illegal aliens moment and various other moments. So this was, to my mind, the single most effective display of Trump owning the libs in Trump owning the libs history and go through it systematically, because it wasn't only that he baited Ilhan Omar into shouting at him. And there is this idea that it's hard to confirm because of the way the camera work, is that when people were chanting usa, usa, usa, that she was chanting kkk, kkk.
- [29:18]
C
That was Talib. Yeah, okay, but I agree with you on. You can't say like this. Absolutely. But it really, really looks like it.
- [29:31]
A
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- [30:51]
B
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- [31:13]
A
so and of course Ilhan Omar was shouting at him from the floor. He baited her like he said. He talked about the Somali fraud in Minneapolis and then he shifted into Captain Phillips territory because he said so it's the Somali. I'm sorry to laugh because it's really pirates, Somali pirates in Minnesota anyway. So I mean, I'm cynical. I've already said negative stuff about Trump and what I think on his policies and I think he wildly mishandled Minneapolis and ICE and all of that. But if what he wanted was getting some footage of, you know, left wing, America hating Democratic congressmembers shouting at him for use later to put it in his hip pocket for use later. He sure got that. And he not only got it there,
- [32:18]
D
he got it when Rashida Tlaib was sitting next to Ilhan Omar wearing a big pin, a keffiyeh and a big pin that said F ice.
- [32:28]
A
Right? Yes. So we got that and they were in a two shot. So that means, you know, they were right there together. He got the stand up for, you know, stand up if you support America and not, you know, evil illegal aliens and Democrats didn't stand. And then came the capper, which is really so the mother of the woman who was killed on the Charlotte train by the crazy person illegal he asked that they stand up for her.
- [33:06]
E
I think though, this is, he also got wrong. The guy who committed that or is alleged to have commit that is a citizen, not an illegal.
- [33:12]
A
Okay, then I got it wrong too, and I apologize there anyway. But he said stand up for her. Stand up for her. And they didn't stand up for her. Now what, what, what are, why are we standing up to give a standing ovation to a woman whose daughter was murdered? I understand it's a tribute to her and the terrible tragedy that she suffered and all that, but nonetheless he, they, he was like, you're not going to stand for her. It's sort of like, what is wrong with you people? And then there was the moment at which he said, you're all crazy. What's the matter with you? You're all crazy.
- [33:53]
C
That was, by the way, that was for definite.
- [33:56]
D
This is like a do no harm kind of thing. It's the President's night, it's his moment. And if they can't stand and pay respects to these are basically average Americans who had faced, you know, face some kind of adversity, who he's highlighting. The President is the master of picking out 60, 40, 80, 20, 70, 30 issues. The joke is on them. And I think he understands that pretty keenly. As with the team USA hockey team where we went into the evening and, and you know, most of us were agog at an article in the Athletic that was slamming them for taking a phone call from the President and laughing during their locker room celebration and then deciding to attend the State of the Union when I think they would have been right to accept the invitation regardless of who the President is. And then, you know, former Washington Post sportswriter that at the Atlantic having a meltdown on social media over this. You know, the President's very, very good at this. And the Democrats, I think would be well advised to simply, you know, stand and applaud when it's other Americans who are being.
- [35:18]
A
Well, the speech was long enough. I will say the speech was long enough that it had an educative effect because by the time he got to the helicopter pilot and the 200 year old veterans, they stood like everybody was
- [35:37]
E
object to say. I think that, that there's a broader cultural issue here with regard to the political props that have now populated State of the Union addresses for far too long, in my opinion. I think it's absolutely, Eliana is absolutely right having a winning American team from the Olympics come and get a applause. Excellent. Any military veteran who served his or her country and was injured in the line of duty and is getting an award for their courage and patriotism. Absolutely on board with that. But then you have all the sort of the symbolic people. And I actually did not like seeing a weeping mother who'd lost her daughter, held everyone told to stand up and applaud her. It just seemed off to me. Now, that's a personal choice and I understand why politically, he wanted to highlight that, but I, I'm sort of sick and tired of that kind of political prop making of ordinary Americans because there aren't. They aren't ordinary Americans. They become political props. And it's why Eliana is absolutely right to trash the media who trashed the hockey team. Those guys were actually very old school and how they were celebrating their victory and they were happy to get a call from the president. And we should return to that kind of normalcy, regardless of how unusually abnormal our presidents may or may not be in terms of their own behavior. I liked that so much. And I think the fact that some people found it disconcerting that they didn't immediately take a political stand shows what's wrong with a lot of our broader culture right now.
- [37:01]
C
Okay, but that's what was effective about the hockey thing, was that the story in the Athletic and other stories, like it said, I saw one in the Nation, you know, was, yes, it's, it matters that you've done this for your country, but it also matters who you associate with and who you are associated with on camera and stuff like that. And what I thought was so effective about the hockey players at the State of the Union was the fact that they were just one of many who nobody would ever question accepting an invitation to the State of the Union. Like, no, but there's no articles saying, it's really great that you, you know, that you earned a Purple Heart defending America at war, but you shouldn't accept it from Trump. There was no article stating anything like, there's no article saying, like, look at this greatest generation veteran, you know, a true American hero. Too bad it's not Obama giving him the medal, because then he should go. But, but there's something really wrong with a war hero accepting a presidential Medal of Freedom, you know, from this. Nobody says that about those other things. They only say it about hockey because they're, it's subsumed into this, like, all these other stupid, silly, you know, conflicts that, that most people don't pay attention to.
- [38:34]
A
I don't.
- [38:35]
C
But, but, but what was effective about it was like, I just think you see the lineup and you go like, yeah, of course all these people were being, who are being offered to be, you know, given a medal by the president, accepted.
- [38:49]
A
Yeah, but that's not the point. Honestly, that's not the. This is the cultural point. The reason that the athletic published the article that said that they lost, that the hockey team lost the room, meaning it lost the press room, meaning it lost the liberal. It lost the New York Times athletic, you know, city room or the sports
- [39:11]
D
desk, and the former Washington Post sports writer Sally Jenkins.
- [39:15]
A
Sally Jenkins, whose father, noted hockey player. Sally father is spinning in his grave because her father, who was the great, great comic novelist and sports writer Dan Jenkins, would not have held with her Misha Goss and Narskite. The point here is it's a culture war moment. The culture war moment was, why isn't he celebrating the female hockey players the same way he's celebrating the male hockey players? And when he called the hockey players in the hot and the. In the locker room and said, I guess we have to invite the girls along too, that was like, my hair is on fire. And Sally Jenkins is like, you know who, you know what? The WNBA gets higher ratings than hockey. So don't think that women's sports are less popular than men's sports. And I don't know what else, whatever else was going on. And the point here is they walked into a buzz saw. They walked into a culture war buzz saw. Because he wanted to celebrate the 46 years since the. One of these moments, hinge moments in American cultural history when the US hockey team beat the Soviets in 1980 at a low ebb for the United States. Right? This was right after the hostages had been taken in Afghan, in Iran and the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan and we'd heard there were missiles in Cuba and Three Mile island had melted down. And somehow up in Lake Placid, out of nowhere, this stumblebum hockey team wins a gold medal. And America goes, oh, my God, good news for once in a lifetime. And here comes this hockey team out of nowhere, winning a medal in 46 years. And that was the big shift. And they turn it into everything is culture. Everything is a culture war. Everything is a goddamn culture war, and people are sick of it. And they fell into his trap again and again and again on. On common Sense, like, of course the hockey team's going to be there. Like, of course they're going to be there. Obama would have had them there, too. It's not, it's, it's, it's, it's a gimme. But then he got smart, then he got even more sophisticated. That's why I say it was a really interesting. On the libs thing, because he had then the very odd moment when this pretty teenager who goes to Liberty University is shown on camera having been guided down a road to transition to becoming a male. And her parents and the school system was help. Was. Was trying to hide from her parents the fact that. That she wanted to become a man. You know, she wanted to go through gender reassignment surgery, and the parents nipped it in the bud. And she's now going to an evangelical college in Southern Virginia. And he basically said, a boy is a boy, a girl is a girl. Everybody in this room who thinks otherwise is crazy. And they fell for that, too. There was a little shouting, there was no applause whatever, all that stuff. He played liberal culture warriors like a piano in this speech. He's often bad at it, right? He's often bad at the culture war, dog whistling, like in Charlottesville and some other, you know, in 2017. It was. He was horrible at it. He screwed it up. He didn't know where to go. And this speech was a master class in making your opposition behave in a way that you can then say, oh, my God, like, these people are nuts. And so that's why I think that the hockey thing isn't stupid. It was emblematic of the way in which the left, more than the right, has lost its mind in the last 10 years and turned everything into a political and ideological pageant, leaving room for the right to go. Of course, a boy is a boy and a girl. What, are you crazy? What kind of madness is this? And that's like, again, as Eliana said, that's a 7030 issue or an 8020 issue or something with the American people. And Democrats should know that and act accordingly to protect themselves on the downside, but they can't, because just as Trump believes in tariffs, they believe in social radicalism. It's their deepest. It's their most deeply held conviction. These ideas, like, that's. That's. They're willing to. They're willing to go to the mattresses for them.
- [44:05]
D
Well, I also think they're petrified of their base. That silly, you know, like, some of them may not believe this deep down, but. And we've seen the handful of them that disclaimed this stuff in the, you know, one week after the 2024 election have now back backpedaled on that because they're afraid of these people. But who cares? They should. They should not care about their base. Seeing Them clap. It's not going to matter when voters actually go to the polls. And look, this stuff may yet, may yet not matter because people will be so dissatisfied with the economy or whatever. But, but as a, for the, over the long term, as a matter of the way the party thinks about things and conduct itself, it certainly will matter. And Democrats should be thinking about this were they, you know, sensible, but they're not.
- [45:01]
B
John, I agree with you that Trump largely owned the libs on the culture war last night. Up and down. Personally, the almost trans girl moment for me falls into the category Christine was talking about. It struck me as exploitative. And my, my response was like, that kid doesn't need to be on TV at a State of the Union address. She just needs to be left alone. At this point, I don't know if I'm alone.
- [45:40]
A
I don't, I do not disagree. Yeah. With anything anybody has said critical of all of this, the spectacle, the lies, the use of, you know, the use of ordinary people as props and tools and the exploit and the exploitation of these things. Emotionally, in this way, I am totally in agreement. Obviously, paying tribute to American heroes is one thing, and paying tribute to a sports team is, is also, is entirely another, and that's fine. But, you know, generally speaking, I am totally, I'm totally in agreement, but it just is what it is. Like, this is the world that we're living in. So you sort of have to, you can, you can, you can sort of, you know, how you can, you know, be Lear, you know, on the heath, screaming about the injustice of nature, or you can, like, you know, basically live within the reality of it. They, you know, Biden did it, too. Like, you know, Biden had Brittney Griner, I believe, at the, at the State of the Union in 2023 or 2024. Not that he shouldn't or he should like, it's, I'm just saying it's like, so that's, that's where we're, we're living. So if you're going to do it, if you're going to do it, you might as well do it well. And even though it was incredibly exploitative, if you're going to say, here's the thing, we're Republicans, we believe in cutting taxes, helping you, lowering your health care costs, you know, fighting tyranny, which he did go into and we should talk about a little bit and all that, where your guys, these other guys, they support illegal aliens, they don't like law enforcement and they want to trend, they want to Turn, they want to cut children's body parts off in connection and they hate our hockey team. You know, it's sort of like, okay, you know, if you're trying to sort of establish a through line. The only Republican through line for the 2026 election, absent some kind of massive economic recovery. Trump did that in the speech. And that's what I, where I want to go before we talk about foreign
- [47:53]
C
policy, I just want to say, though, real quick, I want to defend one Democrat not standing up last night. And I just. Tom Suozzi is very relatable. It was late. We all understand what it's like. And so if you fell asleep, it's okay not to stand. I think Tom Suozzi probably supports some of those things. But, you know, it just, it just, it was past the bedtime.
- [48:16]
E
The one person who should be a little nervous also going forward is surprisingly, a new job was not issued to Marco Rubio, but to JD Vance, who's now some sort of frauds are. That had that to me instantly triggered my. Oh, it's like when Kamala became border czar. I don't think he used the word czar, but he's. I'm sending him off to fight fraud. I thought, oh, poor J.D. he. That's like, that's one of those vice president classic vice president jobs. And Rubio got a shout out for the president. So I thought that was an interesting contrast.
- [48:44]
B
That's a great point. And remember, Biden was like Obama's cancers are, wasn't he? He was, he was supposed to be
- [48:52]
A
in charge of cancer when he, when he, when he moved to make Hillary the vice. The presidential successor. He gave can. He gave Biden the cancer moonshot. That was his, that was his consolation prize. I'm, I'm a little more. I think Vance has a huge opportunity as the frauds are, because we're five years, we're six years after Covid. We still have not had a reckoning on the $6 trillion that went out the door for Covid. The only reckoning that we've seen, and this actually dates back pre Covid, right. Is the Somali fraud. This is like shooting fish in a
- [49:38]
E
barrel, except he doesn't have any power to do anything about it. He has to get convince the people who work for Trump to do something about it. And that's why it's, I'm saying it's one of those impossible vice president jobs. He might very well be just the guy to go after him like Elliot Ness, but he has no power to
- [49:55]
A
do that okay, so that's okay.
- [49:56]
C
He'd see, I think on the fraud stuff, he doesn't even have to have that power. I think it's just like, just issue reports, EPR win, like you stand up there versus the Somali pirates or whatever he's calling them. And I think it's just a way to get him to win. And the difference with the border was that you don't have like, that was not a good look for Democrats to stand next to the border and say, this is my work. But it's, but it's, it's great to say I'm the guy. I'm the opposite of the fraudsters who are, you know, defrauding an entire state of all their money and savings and, and, and all this other stuff and taking advantage of it. I just think it's kind of an easy handoff.
- [50:39]
A
And not just that.
- [50:40]
C
Vans probably, probably appreciates it.
- [50:43]
A
Not just that. I think all you have to do is issue reports like, he doesn't have subpoena power and he won't have this and he won't have that. But he, but they can dig into things and say, you know, the state of Georgia or whatever. I don't, whatever state he choose what, you know, the state of, you know, illinois. Where's the $960 million that went to support the H. Improving the H vacs at all the schools in Illinois? They haven't, it hasn't happened. I demand that the, you know, the state house in Illinois conduct an investigation and do X, Y and Z. That's pretty easy.
- [51:22]
E
Or it could just become a clearinghouse for all the many existing media reports and lawsuits that have already been filed against local level corrupt officials.
- [51:31]
A
Like, like the Somali fraud all in one place. Yeah. So I think actually handled well, but I, I see no evidence that Vance is good at these things. But if he were to handle it. Well, I just want to point out that in 1942 or 19.
- [51:49]
D
Yeah, sorry, finish your point.
- [51:52]
A
I was just gonna say in 1942, there was a little known obscure senator from Missouri who was put in charge of a committee that was looking into military, you know, military procurement theft during World War II. And his name was, of course, Harry Truman. And he became famous in America because this commission, like a commission during the Civil War, the Wade Commission, exposed the fact that so many people were getting rich off the war effort and that that money was going into their pockets rather than to help the boys overseas. And it are, it is unquestionably the reason that he became the person that FDR supplanted Henry Wallace with, in the 1944 presidential campaign, one of the more most providential moments literally in the history of the world. Because Henry Wallace, his sitting vice president, was effectively an agent of the Soviet Union. And had he not been replaced and Roosevelt died in office, the history of the 20th century would have gone very, very differently. So I only bring that up to say that fraud has often been a winning thing to be the fraud czar has a distinguished history in American politics. Eliana. I'm sorry.
- [53:13]
D
And. And it was for this administration because of the public focus on the social welfare program, fraud in the Twin Cities that was brought by the media, in part by the Manhattan Institute City Journal, and that the administration then drew attention to because of those media accounts, to Tim Walls announced he would not run for a third term in office. But Vance now, because of this new remit, can draw attention to local media accounts. He can use the resources, he can direct the resources of the federal government to focus on these things. And well, it may not be happening on the scale that it's happened in Minnesota for other reasons. It is this, that type of thing is surely happening in other states and municipalities and localities around the country. And he can draw attention to it, assure people that this administration is focused on it and weeding it and weeding it out and draw media coverage and public attention to it in a way that benefits the administration. That's not quite what happened in Minnesota where there was enormous, an enormous amount of attention to it. What the administration did in response was say, oh, we're going to do an immigration surge.
- [54:46]
A
Yeah.
- [54:46]
D
So in many ways I think this is a chance for a redo. Can they handle the fraud issue in a way that's politically beneficial as opposed to a cell phone?
- [55:00]
A
And can they be smart about it instead of being lame and like heavy handed and ham fisted and calling things fraud that aren't fraud, but are simply things that the administration disagrees with ideologically or that Vance doesn't like ideologically. If he can, if he can keep his powder dry and do this rationally, sensibly and without and uncontroversially by which he says this thing got $250 million, no money was ever spent on. None of that money ever went to the thing that it was, you know, that it was apportioned for. Where is it? That's what the American people want to know, or that's what the people of the state of Arkansas want to know or whatever. And then it can go on from there. So, so I still think that's an interesting game. Now, final point, the Republican part. Remember I said at the beginning, most of the people watch the speech are people who voted for Trump. I mean, that, that, that's what, that's what we've learned about the audience for these speeches. Republican Party has a problem going into 2026, a huge gap in voter enthusiasm between Democrats and Republicans that is apparently growing week by week. Intention to vote, enthusiasm about voting in the midterms, all of that, all of these special election results showing shifts of 30 points in the direction of Democrats because Republicans in those districts are just staying home and not voting in the specials. Did this speech work to stanch the bleeding among Republicans, to reignite their enthusiasm for Trump and for the Republican Party? Will it be a help going forward?
- [56:56]
B
Is my question more help than not? Certainly. I mean, I would think. But, but it will not have single handedly accomplished anything.
- [57:09]
D
I agree with that more or less. But I think over the next two weeks this serves as a reminder to Republicans of why they're with this guy, the powers of Trump, you know, the Trump's powers of persuasion, why he was elected. And I think it will re energize them in the short term. Is this speech actually going to matter for the midterms? No, probably not. But short term, it's a net positive.
- [57:40]
A
Trump mentioned, talked a little bit about Iran, very, very, very briefly talks about Iran. But he did signal two very important things, one of which is he said Iran is, is eager to continue to develop weaponry that can strike the United States. Ballistic missiles that, that have an intercontinental frame. That's a casus belli right there. He said, we, we can't ever let them get a nuclear weapon. I'm not going to let them get a nuclear weapon. I'm not going to let them be a state sponsor of, I'm not, they're the world's worst state sponsor of terrorism. He made the systematic points about why the regime is evil. And then he said, and they just killed 30,000 people. First time that he has acknowledged since he took up this bizarre talking point about how he saved 800 people from being hanged and therefore somehow wanted to take credit for that and didn't want to therefore talk about what actually happened, which was that he may have, may or not have saved people from being hanged, but 30,000 other people were killed while he was saving those 800 people. He went with the number. So I thought that was a pretty big signal that he's moving toward war, but maybe not, who knows?
- [59:16]
D
I think that's probably right. My nits to pick with him were sort of over the case he laid out. He, he said correctly that Silamani has murdered Americans. That's of course. That's of course correct. But he said we're doing this because Iran can't get a nuclear bomb and that we're calling this off because they haven't said we'll never have a nuclear weapon. As if, if they said that it would ever be believable. I mean, the issue with Iran is it's right now is its ballistic missile capacity and it's perpetual sponsorship of terrorism in the region and its terrorist proxies. And he didn't make much mention of, of those things.
- [60:13]
A
The issue mentioned them. He did mention both of them. So it's not like he only went nuclear. He only went with nuclear. He.
- [60:21]
D
No, it just seems to me that, that the major issue right now is not Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon. And, and overall, it seemed to me that he minimized Iran's massacre of its own people, which is the actual red line that he drew.
- [60:42]
A
Right.
- [60:43]
D
A couple of months back.
- [60:45]
C
I think the importance of the Iran stuff in the, in the speech was not to make a case at all, because I don't think he's trying to make a case for what he's doing. I think he's, you know, there's F22s in, in Israel. Like, I, I just. With Americans on them. Like, I think is this, you know, he's made his decision that something's going to happen. I actually think the importance of including in the speech, and not in a speech in which John, as you mentioned, he didn't mention Canada, is to signal yet again, China. Excuse me, China. Right. Our second worst behind Canada, her second biggest enemy.
- [61:23]
A
Right.
- [61:24]
C
But, but I think, but so the significance of it is that I think he is yet again signaling Iran is important to him and he sees it as part of his legacy. This is the message that has been from Trump. There have been mixed signals at times, and it's, you know, nobody and, and it's, it's kind of confusing to see where he's going with it. And as Eliana said, sometimes he makes, he, he, he sets out to make a case and just uses, like, the least effective arguments, as if it's sort of like a throwaway, whatever. There's all sorts of issues with how he does it, but he keeps doing it. He keeps saying, Iran, Iran, Iran, Iran. He's keeping it in the news. He wants people to continue talking about it. And thinking about what the United States wants to do with Iran and what it wants from Iran. And that's just to me, as a signal that he is saying this issue is important to me. Maybe it's not tariffs, but it's an unusual amount of focused attention, of focusing the public's attention on a foreign policy thing for him that there is something he really feels is important for his legacy here. And that I think gives people a certain amount of confidence that, you know, he means, he means, he means business on some level here because he's the one saying, look at what we're doing with Iran. Watch Iran, watch this space. And he's going to have to be the one to come through or not.
- [63:01]
A
We should make note of the fact that this week, this week marked the fourth anniversary of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I think two days ago was the fourth anniversary. And this is the most shameful aspect of this administration's foreign policy conduct is this bizarre refusal to acknowledge that this war is a one sided war of invasion, imperialist occupation and an effort to destroy another country. He talks about it as though it's an unnecessary conflict in which he is going to enter and bring peace to the two sides. When there is no peace to be had. There can only be either capitulation by the Ukrainians or a retreat by the Russians. And it's a black mark, it's a stain, it is indefensible, it is morally unspeakable. And we're sitting here with video of Zelensky, you know, saying we're still here and by God they are still there. And the astounding fact is that everybody agrees that the toll, the war toll on the Russians is vastly larger than the, than the toll on the Ukrainians. The number of casualties on the Russian side is well over a million. Now obviously Ukraine is, you know, buildings, infrastructure, it's, it's, its economy have been, are increasingly being directly targeted by the Russians. But the ingenuity, the ability of the Ukrainians to use whatever is to hand to, to, to inflict massive amounts of pain and damage on the Russian invaders. And Russia itself is a, is a, it's not a miracle, but it's, you know, one of the stories that will be told about this century, about this, you know, nation, a fourth of the size with no really serious military, absolutely standing its ground. The Russians are gaining a couple of yards a day at most in moving forward because the Ukrainians have been so incredibly efficient. And here we are essentially either backing neither side or kind of backing the losing side and it's a very, very strange and discomforting thing.
- [65:47]
E
It, it is the way that Trump says, speaks about the conflict still is also very disconcerting because he says he will frequently, when asked or volunteering information about it, say the same thing, which is, well, if I had been president when this, when Russia, you know, Russia would never have done this if I had been in charge. And that seems to be for him a satisfactory answer rather than discussing, well, they're still fighting. It is, I think in another sense the reason he avoids it and has not behaved well is because it's an old fashioned war. It's the kind of grinding, terrible, you know, fight that lasts for years. It's not, as we've discussed many times, his preference, which is a quick strike, you kill the bad guy, out you go, victory for all. It is not that kind of conflict and it's, you know, the European adjacent aspect of it that all of that, that that has creates conflict among his base voters. So I completely agree with you, John. And its absence is, is starting to, especially for Mr. I'm going to make a deal and boasting about all the conflicts he claims to have, you know, permanently resolved. Although we haven' about what's going on in Gaza recently. We haven't talked about who's in charge after Maduro was taken out. So there are a lot of much grayer, more gray areas in term compared to what he has claimed for some of his foreign policy victories.
- [67:03]
A
So there we are, State of the Union one and done three more until, until, until we have another, another president and you know, if he went telethon
- [67:17]
E
by his final year, that's what I'm
- [67:18]
A
saying, an hour and 48 minutes this time.
- [67:22]
C
Lord knows that's just, that's left in this term then his third term. He'll get his third term.
- [67:30]
A
That's right.
- [67:30]
C
As everybody writes. Yeah, three and a half. Because the first one is like not technically say the union.
- [67:37]
A
Yeah. Well, there will probably be somebody sitting in the chair who is not Mike Johnson next time who will be able to rip up the speech or make faces or not stand up when he says stand up. So at least there'll be a lot. There'll be more visual drama at the podium in 2027 than there was in 2026. Okay. Well we've done it. We've solved America's problems. Go Team usa I feel so much better. Thank you.
- [68:09]
C
Than when we started.
- [68:10]
E
That'll be a new mug. We did it.
- [68:12]
A
We did it. We.
- [68:13]
C
It's even better than that.
- [68:15]
A
It's even better than that. That's right. I watched the entire State of the Union and all I got was this lousy T shirt. We'll be back tomorrow for Eliana, Seth, Christine and Abam John Pot Hordes. Keep the candle bur.