Trump's Speech to a Joint Session of Congress

Today I am going to give my impression of cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress last night. Let me fully caveat this by saying that if you have absolutely anything else to do, no matter how unproductive it may seem, it is probably a better use of your time than reading my thoughts about Trump's speech. Frankly, watching paint dry would probably be more useful and maybe even more interesting. For those of you choosing to continue reading, I can summarize my opinion succinctly. The speech sucked.

There was a time that regardless of whatever you thought of Trump, you had to concede that he could give an entertaining, if largely false and not particularly interesting, speech. But this one strained my capacity to stay awake. It was interminably long and, not to put too fine of a point on it, boring. It was the longest such speech in U.S. history. In hindsight, I should have followed Representative Al Green's example and gotten myself ejected from my living room. But having neither the foresight nor a Sergeant of Arms at hand, I was stuck watching for the entire ordeal.

Trump began his speech with a fanciful description of the state of our country. Trump's presentation had little in common with the reality that most Americans are experiencing. It's one thing to put lipstick on a pig, but being completely delusional is another thing entirely. Trump described a country that most of us wouldn't recognize. As Trump went through his list of what he considers accomplishments, Americans throughout the country must have realized how little those things matter to their daily lives. Trump spent less than two minutes discussing the cost of living and never mentioned Medicaid. Grocery prices are still high and getting higher. The stock market is down. Consumer confidence is down. People's lives are not getting better, and no amount of gaslighting is going to prevent them from understanding this. Moreover, a number of Trump's proclaimed accomplishments are currently tied up in court and have not taken effect. Trump even took credit for several of former President Joe Biden's accomplishments. While Trump claimed that he had inherited a disastrous economy from Biden, the truth is just the opposite. Four weeks ago, the Atlanta Federal Reserve was estimating that first-quarter GDP growth would be 3.9%. Now it is expecting GDP to be -2.8% down. Great job everyone.

As is the Republican tendency, when all else fails, they turn to cultural issues. Trump could hardly run on the economy. Hence, he devoted considerable time to attacking transgender people. He repeatedly returned to transgender issues throughout his speech and probably spent more time talking about trans people than any other topic. You would never know that Trump recently hosted two prominent trans women at Mar-a-Lago. I am very skeptical that those watching from home who are witnessing growing inflation, job losses, and uncertain futures really believe that the trans community is worth that amount of attention.

Let's all take a moment and spare a thought for the fact-checkers who are probably still tied to their computers attempting to address Trump's full list of falsehoods. Trump told lies big and small. He claimed that the U.S. DOGE Service (DOGE) discovered $8 million being spent to "make mice transgender". The doge.gov website lists no such savings but, more importantly, Trump was probably referring to research involving the injection of hormones into animals (including mice) in order to research the effects with regard to disease prevention or susceptibility. There are no transgender mice because a mouse cannot tell you how it identifies. Trump claimed that a drop in interest rates was a result of DOGE cuts. In fact, interest rates dropped because investors were fleeing the collapsing stock market and buying bonds. Trump even fell for Shadow President Elon Musk's Social Security lies. Musk recently presented a list of extremely old people whose records are still in the Social Security database. Part of this confusion was a lack of understanding of how the version of COBOL being used on the computers handles dates. More importantly, Musk provided no evidence that those of unlikely ages were actually receiving benefits. Nevertheless, Trump claimed that fraudulent funds were being paid out to such individuals. There is no evidence to support that allegation, and a previous investigation identified the problem but determined that it was not cost-effective to correct the issue (there is no cost savings when funds are not be paid out). Trump also lied about getting rid of an electric vehicle mandate. Since no such mandate ever existed, Trump could hardly get rid of it.

When it came to DOGE and Musk, Trump was a bit all over the place. He recognized Musk — who was seated in the gallery — and described him as the "head of DOGE". This is legally problematic because government lawyers have argued in court that Musk is simply an advisor to the President and has no connection to DOGE. I know of one court case in which plaintiffs have already submitted Trump's remark to buttress their case. Trump also praised Musk and his group of young computer geeks who have taken over running broad swathes of the government, but then went on to complain about "unelected bureaucrats". Apparently, the irony escaped him.

Trump's supporters have often stressed that unlike other candidates, he is against foreign intervention. I don't know if those who made such claims have changed their tune or, as cult members tend to do, simply embraced the new reality. Either way, the non-interventionist Trump was nowhere to be seen. He said that the U.S. would take control of Greenland, "one way or another". Similarly, discussing the Panama Canal, Trump said that it was built by Americans for Americans and suggested that the U.S. would regain sovereignty over it. In this regard, one omission was any mention of Gaza and Trump's hopes that the Palestinians could be evicted and ownership of the land given to the U.S.

Trump spent a considerable amount of time recognizing members of the audience. In what could have been a heartwarming moment, Trump singled out a young cancer survivor who dreamed of being a police officer. At Trump's direction, the head of the U.S. Secret Service made the boy an honorary member of the service and gave him a badge and ID card. The reality, however, is that just earlier in his speech, Trump had praised DOGE's cuts which, among other things, removed funding for pediatric cancer research. The boy may well owe his life to the types of programs that Trump and Musk have just eliminated. Similarly, Trump informed another audience member that he had just been awarded acceptance at a military academy. The young man seemed well-qualified and was certainly shocked and excited. I don't begrudge him this honor in the least. However, I found Trump's exploitation of this moment to be distasteful. I saw that some compared Trump's performance to Oprah Winfrey's famous "and you get a car" moment. But to me, what this brought to mind was a king bestowing favors on his subjects. I suspect that is an image that Trump would not necessarily discourage.

As I said earlier, to hear Trump tell it, everything is going great in the country. The reality is different. Trump did not mention the stock market collapse that had occurred the very day of his speech. This has been a particularly bad week for stocks thanks to the tariffs Trump imposed on Canada and Mexico. But, Trump's reaction to the economic issues facing the country was to brush them off. He claimed that we are facing "a little disturbance" and, when talking about farmers who are being hit particularly hard by Trump's policies, said that they wouldn't mind the difficulties.

Trump concluded his speech by saying that the future will be like nothing we've seen before. Frankly, that is exactly my fear. Until now, I have never seen a President who was so squarely determined to destroy our government, our economy, our foreign relations, and our standing in the world. If Trump can do this amount of damage in just a few weeks, imagine what he will do in four years?