The State Of the Union Is ... Long
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It was the longest. Donald Trump just gave the longest State of the Union in history. What was the final count? The final count was 99 minutes. So that's the longest speech in history. It was, I don't know. Anyone have thoughts off the bat? It felt longer than 99 minutes. It did. It did. It was a lot of dark. Yeah. Lots of long descriptions of hideous, awful crimes. Yeah. His speeches are always long.

they're always long yeah i mean look it was a it was a greatest hit speech peppered in with some new stunts and interesting scary moments but like a lot of what we've heard before um but he's really relishing in it he's really enjoying his he's really he's really enjoying his time up there yeah you could with trump it's always he can give his rally s speech or he can give a more formal joint address in this case he decided to do both yeah right

I would say it was not surprising in any way. No, nothing really new. Like it felt what I expected. We said this before in our live stream, like a lot of accomplishments for most of the speech, very little news, new policy. I mean, we'll go through some of it. I think what was notable is at the beginning, you know, he did his speech.

We've had the greatest month of any president in history. Number two was George Washington. Bob Busby's bragging, bragging. And then early on, there was a little bit of an interruption at the beginning of the speech. So let's listen to that. We won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country. Mr. Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir.

Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant-at-arms to restore order. Remove the members. So that was something. So Donald Trump does his whole...

You know, we won seven swing states, greatest popular vote victory ever. How much you even bench, bro? Yeah. A bunch of Democrats start making some noise. Al Green of Texas starts interrupting him. And then, you know, Mike Johnson was ready for it and decided he was going to tell the sergeant of arms to get rid of him.

Yeah. What did you guys think of that? So his line, right, is you have no mandate to cut Medicaid. That's what he, that's what he was, that's what he, that was the message of his protest. So at least, you know, he's trying to make a moment about Medicaid. That's what he, that's all. So just to quote the man and to, you know, it was an act of protest.

Yeah, it didn't bother me. It didn't not like it wouldn't. It's not what I would have done, but it didn't bother me. I kind of didn't hate that it interrupted Trump and got him out of his flow for like 10 minutes. The Republicans compared to January 6th. That's when this is going to get really annoying.

Yeah. You mean when a bunch of protesters were in the chamber desecrating, breaking down the doors of Congress, and then Trump pardoned them all? I'm shocked that many of them weren't invited as the guests of Republicans tonight. Yeah, I thought there would be more of that. More January 6th. Curry, stay with them before January 6th next time. I think there are a couple of points here. One is...

If you watch the video, there's something really fascistic about the whole thing, the way Trump, when he starts protesting, points at the door. And then J.D. Vance starts pointing, and then you see Mike Johnson sort of point at the Sergeant of Arms to tell them to go get Al Green. Like, it is a deeply, like, we're in the United States Capitol here. Moments later, Trump will say he ended government censorship as he removes him from it. Yeah, free speech.

This is why Mark Zuckerberg is so excited about him. It's just like they plan for this moment. They plan to use taxpayer-funded law enforcement to remove dissenting voices from the Capitol. Well, we should tell the backstory. The reason they plan for this moment is all bad things start with Axios. How to report that Democrats were going to bring eggs in pocket constitutions and try to disrupt the speech.

And there was a couple of reports and it was like sourced to unnamed Democrats. And so then Republicans, some Republicans were like, we there's a report from Axios that Democrats are going to throw eggs at Donald Trump, which they were saying that was not a report at all. And so then the House Freedom Caucus had a post that was like, if Democrats interrupt the speech, we will have we will censure them, which, by the way, now they're saying that Al Green could be censured.

Oh, no. Yeah, I know. What was that going to do? A censure, by the way, is the House votes and says, you're bad. Seems very quaint. Other censure members include Marjorie Taylor Greene. Right. And so they were clearly all ready for this, which is why, which is why this happened. But they were very much ready to do like a kind of hand gesture of like, get him out, get him out. They're like, we want to do a hand gesture and like applauding, restoring order. I guess like what I can't, I feel like,

I feel conflicted about it, right? Because, you know, like there are people who are joking like, oh, Democrats, if you really think Donald Trump is an authoritarian menace, wearing different colored hats is a very silly thing to do, right? Like, you know, in response to the authoritarian menace, we coordinated our outfits. That sounds ridiculous. But like, but like, then I think we didn't because there were people in purple, people in white. You thought he was going to lie, but we had signs that said false.

Right. And then like some people coordinated pink and purple and white. And then it's like, well, that's just a bunch of different outfits. But like the, the, then you think, okay, so what should Democrats do? Right. Should they just like this, you know, don't lend Donald Trump the pomp and circumstance of the state of the union or really a joint address to Congress to be exact. But like we're,

We're breaking the rules. Then you say, all right, Democrats either walk out or they don't show up. Like, what does that get us? Right. Like we kind of look childish. We look like we're not being like we look partisan. So I don't know what the right thing to do is. Like, I don't know if protesting is. I don't know if sitting there is just it's tough because it's hard to feel because we don't have a lot of power. It's worth remembering, though, when MTG Marjorie Taylor Greene interrupted Joe Biden. He then had that back and forth with her. He looked really strong and like like he was kind of sharp and

you know, making light of it, kind of making fun of her a bit. And it was a good moment for him. And, you know, I don't know if MTG keeps standing and won't sit down and keep screaming. Maybe the Sergeant of Arms kicks her out. But I do think Dan's point is right, that it did look a little authoritarian in the moment. Yeah, but he also didn't want, like Marjorie Jellery didn't, she sat down, Al Green didn't. The thing is also Trump didn't have like a whole exchange. He kind of didn't. No, he was just like, get her out. Yeah. It just-

Not to go all Daniel Dale on this, but Al Green's right. There is no mandate for Medicaid cuts. And what Trump said about his mandate was fucking absurd. Yeah. I mean, getting up there, the president of the United States, getting up there to talk about the seven swing states you won, the popular vote, saying that the president who was before you was the worst president in history, like, that doesn't rate high on the decorum scale. No.

Donald Trump's popular vote margin is smaller than every popular vote winner since Al Gore in 2000. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote in 2016 by more than Donald Trump did in 2024. He's sick to violent mob in the Capitol. What are we doing? None of this, like, it's...

Was it effective? Was it not effective? It doesn't matter. It's where we're like way, we're through the looking glass now. Al Green getting kicked out or not. It's like, it's not even, who cares? I think, but well, I guess the reason it's like, I know I have the same, like we're through the looking glass when it's like, okay, well, what do we, what should they do? They're still sitting there. We're on the other side of the looking glass. We're on the, we're on the wrong side of the fucking mirror. We're still here. So what do we do all day? Well, you, you, you, you stand up, you get kicked out or you don't like, I really don't think either matters.

I don't think it either has an effect. I don't think we're going to remember this much longer, is I guess what my point is. Okay. So then he keeps going. He does the accomplishments. He does keep going, yeah. Does the accomplishments. He gets to, and then he gets to Doge.

And when he gets to Doge, first of all, he says that Elon Musk is the head of Doge, which is interesting because in court, they're arguing that he was not the head of Doge. He's just support staff. That's what he said at the cabinet meeting. So some plaintiffs in a lawsuit immediately, you know, filed to the court and saying, oh, by the way, Donald Trump, the president just said that Elon Musk is head of Doge. And then he went through some of the Doge cuts.

$40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants. Nobody knows what that is. $8 million to promote LGBTQI+, in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of. $8 million for making mice transgender. $10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique.

$20 million for the Arab Sesame Street in the Middle East. $8 million to make mice transgender and $8 million to turn them back. And some of those mice, by the way, what's so fucking terrible is that some of those trans mice then kind of defeated a bunch of other mice in all these mazes.

And it's like, is that fair to have trans mice competing against cisgender mice in a maze? Well, you know what's nice is that he brought one of those trans mice to the State of the Union sitting right next to Melania. Yeah, made him head of the Park Service. And that's all you need to know about the speech.

Oh, my God. Sign the EO right there. Stupid speech. Yeah. So, first of all, like, I haven't looked all this up. I'm guessing a lot of that probably isn't true. For sure. For sure. The reason I know that is not just because I'm guessing. Then he did the long thing about Social Security where he repeated –

The whole thing about like 150 year olds and 300 year olds getting benefits and this and that, none of which is true. Not only has it been fact checked by like every media organization, but Donald Trump's head of Social Security, the person that's now the administrator after everyone else resigned, was like, oh, by the way, 200 year olds aren't getting Social Security. That wasn't.

So, like, even his own administration has said that's wrong. And he just went through the whole thing, did the whole thing. 200-year-olds are getting this and this, which went on and on and on. Went for, like, five minutes. He did every age bracket. He did every group. The doge cuts that he mentioned are probably not accurate either. But I don't know what you guys thought about that. It's just a bunch of people who don't have a date of death associated with their record. They're not getting benefits. You know, they're just making this part up. And the Mozambique grant for circumcision was...

to a nonprofit to do HIV and AIDS prevention. You can explain all these things. It just takes time. I mean, ultimately, all of these battles over government spending is about specifics and who can get the more evocative examples. And probably, even though it's mostly bullshit...

This was one of the more effective parts of the speech for Trump. He's got to go up there and list a bunch of programs that most Americans would be concerned in the unfair context in which Trump delivered it. We can sort of other taxpayers going to that. Then we stand up with our much smaller, teeny tiny megaphone and we talk about all the cuts that are coming from Doge. Well, not our false signs, but like we have been winning politically the battle over Doge because the focus has been on

cutting, you know, the people in charge of protecting nuclear plants, the FAA air traffic controls, and the Head Start, Department of Education, those sorts of things. And that's the battle we're going to be in for the next year on these budget things. Yeah, I mean, people go into this...

thinking that there's a lot of waste and inefficiency in government. And so when he lists those programs, people are probably like, oh my God, I thought it was bad, but I didn't know it was that bad. That's probably the normal reaction to that. I'm sure that's how it is. If you don't know that it was all bullshit or exaggerated or whatever. It's also, look, again, it's like,

you know, defending these programs is always a trap. And it's like, fine, we live in a world where defending really good things is a trap. But a lot of science sounds ridiculous until it makes the world a much better place. You could probably go back and describe research into stealth airplanes. It's like they're trying to make invisible airplanes so you can come up with- You're for the mice. Yeah, yeah. Well, I'm for a process of assigning grants that allow you to do medical research in all kinds of ways. Like we study all kinds of things in mice before we study them in people. And like, of course, of course.

We did a few of those lines in Obama's State of the Unions. Got the salmon, got the milk. Right. Well, like that, right. We were talking about this earlier, that it is like a central conceit of the movie Dave. Yes. And in Dave, right, he goes through and he says, like, we're spending money to convince people they were right to buy a car they already bought. It's like, isn't the government stupid? And that's what the 90s did. And now we live in the fucking aftermath. Yeah.

Stupid 90s. Yeah, here we are. So it took him a while to get to the central concern of most voters, which is the cost of everything and affordability.

The first issue he talked about in depth was trans athletes, talked a lot about that. And then finally, somewhere in the 30-minute mark, 40-minute mark, I don't know what it was, I lost track, he got into inflation. And he did mention the price of eggs, but he had someone else to blame. Joe Biden especially let the price of eggs get out of control. The egg price is out of control.

He blamed everything on Joe Biden. He ran harder against Joe Biden in that speech than he did in the campaign at times. It was constant. Yeah. What do we think about the inflation stuff and the cost stuff? Did he...

Well, he's just sort of like he's still in a window where it is like plausible to blame your predecessor. Like I think it's ridiculous. It's no longer apparently ridiculous and embarrassing to brag about your political victory and then spend a few minutes blaming your predecessor for all of your problems in like such explicit detail. Especially in your first speech. Right. It used to be that that would have been seen as ridiculous and beneath the office and contemptible. But we don't feel those things anymore, I guess. But like, okay.

All right. Still Joe Biden's fault. Is that going to be true in three months, in six months? I mean, not a guy who's known to lean into challenges. That's right. That's right. Well, let's see if you can break that record. But like, you know, he's he has only been president for a month. So he has some leeway to say I am still taking like that's not not that he's a ridiculous person, but that's not a ridiculous position. There's a specific question of blaming Joe Biden for the price of the current spike in egg prices. Right. You think that lands with people?

No, but I don't. I think people, as we know, people are not particularly interested in the cost of inflation. They're just mainly interested in blaming the person in charge when it happens. But the bigger issue here for me is inflation is the number one issue in the CBS poll.

80% of people think it should be a top priority for Joe Biden. Sorry, God damn it. 80% of people like Joe Biden. I should do these things this late at night. 80% of people think that inflation should be a top priority for Donald Trump.

29% of people think it is a top priority. He spent two minutes on inflation. He said nothing about lowering the cost of housing, groceries, day-to-day costs. He did energy and drilling. He did nothing, no short-term relief for anyone right now. Inflation costs are, inflation concerns are going up.

You know, there's a our friend Peter Hamby has something in his newsletter tonight about polling of Gen Z men. And Trump's approval rating on inflation has dropped 14 points in a month.

People are souring on the economy on what they care about. It's what the people who put him in office, people who will decide the midterms care about. And he did not bother to talk about it for more than two minutes. He basically hand-waved to the whole thing. And I think that is a massive strategic blunder over the long term because it kind of speaks to the mentality of the administration. And you just can't ignore the main thing that got you elected.

Yeah, if you really wanted to focus on inflation and take it seriously, you would. And you wanted to, you know, indirectly or even directly blame the last administration and say, I inherited this mess, the costs were high, and now I'm going to take it seriously. And, you know, Scott Besant said on – the Treasury Secretary said this weekend –

I think, on the Sunday shows. We're creating an affordability czar or something like that, which is, of course, bullshit. But in a State of the Union, you can spend, yeah, you can say that and then you can add some policy around it. You can do this thing. He just, he kind of. He didn't even try. I mean, he, we'll talk about the tax, he talked about the tax cuts. I guess we can talk about that now. Talk about tax cuts, talk about energy prices. Yeah. But also the tax cuts, he's like, he did the no tax on tips.

He did the no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security benefits. He added no, the loans on a car loan, the interest on a car loan will be tax deductible. Keep in mind, none of this

none of that is in the Republican budget that passed. So like it's Trump's party is like maybe they'll get in later, maybe the Senate will do it, but none of the stuff that he talked about, the tax cuts for like actual working people, middle class people are in the budget that passed. It's like largely tax cuts for rich people. Yeah, and the taxing interest on car loans is like a very regressive tax. And just like all of these things, no tax on tip, the social security, making social security tax deductible, all these things are...

ways of saying you're doing a bunch of middle-class tax cuts when in actuality you're going to do a giant tax cuts for the rich and only bring down rates for the middle class a tiny bit and spend a little bit extra if you do it at all on some of these other ways of lowering taxes. But of course, like, okay, so you've decided you're not taxing tips for somebody that's a waiter, but if you're a barista and you don't make as much on tips, you still pay the rate you paid before. Like why do these, those people not deserve a tax break?

Right. Like I'm fine. Cut the taxes on tips. But like you're choosing between different working class people to make that part of the bill cheaper while doing a massive multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the richest people. Pots of America is brought to you by Zbiotics pre-alcohol.

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Remember to head to zbiotics.com slash crooked and use the code crooked at checkout for 15% off. So the big news today leading up to the speech was that the

The long-awaited tariffs on Mexico and Canada that he had paused for a while finally went into effect. It is 25% tariffs on everything from Canada and Mexico. It was an additional 10% on everything from China. The stock market did quite poorly today. I have two days in a row that it did quite poorly. And Trump talked about it a little bit tonight. So let's listen.

Mexico and Canada, have you heard of that? Words like Jeff's remind us that tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs. They're about protecting the soul of our country. Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it's happening and it will happen rather quickly. There'll be a little disturbance, but we're okay with that. It won't be much. No, you're not.

Feels like that's going to come back to bite him in the ass. The tariffs? The little disturbance. Yes. It's very like Dr. Strangelove. I'm not saying we won't get our hair messed a little bit. You know, like very like, you mean the disturbance being like a possible recession, rising costs, people being unable to afford like the basic cost of life. Like that's the disturbance. Not only that he said disturbance, I hadn't caught until we just heard it again. The second line, we're okay with that.

It's like, are we? Who's we? Don't look at me. Yeah, billionaires might be. The tariffs you put in place today are a huge deal. Canada and Mexico account for 40% of U.S. imports and exports last year. 40% of cars and trucks sold in the U.S. are imported. The Canadians slapped a bunch of retaliatory tariffs on us. The Chinese, their statement was like, fuck you, this means war. So depending on how long this lasts, it could end very, very badly. And I don't know that brushing it off in the State of the Union is a

Very smart play. This issue cannot be that dismissive of jacking up people's costs at a time of high inflation.

I can't – so Howard Lutnick, the commerce secretary today was like, you know, we're talking to Canada and Mexico and we might as early as tomorrow announce that there's a reduction in these tariffs. Not a pause but maybe a reduction or whatever. Like I – do you guys think that he's going to keep this going, this trade war? Because after the stock market today – there was like a segment on Fox yesterday.

of some reporter, Fox News, some reporter at like a car dealership and the guy that owns the car dealership is like, yeah, I got this truck sitting on the lot. It was $80,000. Now it's going to be, I'm not saying anything. Yeah, he did say it was $80,000. It was $80,000, yeah. This truck is $80,000. Now it's going to be another $20,000. No one's going to buy it. And like, I think this could be really bad for him. I know we say that about everything with Trump, but like, I don't know. Prices getting jacked up that high for a long time seems,

Yeah, it absolutely is deeply politically dangerous for him because it gets at the – like when inflation went with Biden, you could talk about all these other things that were – but he has decided to make a specific policy decision that he has talked about. He says it's his favorite word in the English language, to make your costs higher.

And will he stick with it? That's an open question. He does not. He tends to run at the first sign of distress. So we'll see what happens here. He did stick the Chinese tariffs in his first term, stuck with them the whole way. But they were more targeted than this. They were more targeted. And then he had to spend all of the money and then some that could be from the tariffs to get the bidders. He didn't exempt...

energy from Canada. So like gas prices are going to, well, they were, the energy tariffs are only 10%, not 25, which was based on lobbying from the oil industry. But like, right. But it's, it's still like energy prices already went up. And it's not just about, it's not just about what we import, what we import. Like if you, you know, he's obsessed with this trade deficit and,

We have a trade deficit with Canada because of oil, because we use an incredible amount of oil that comes from Canada. If you put that aside, we have a trade surplus with Canada. Canada is our biggest customer. They are our biggest client. They buy a ton of stuff from us. Like they are a customer, right? For everything. Put oil aside. They are a customer. We need them in terms of what we trade. They buy more from us than we buy from them, which means we need them.

And so it's all, it's all farce. That's why, you know, Canada's like, fuck you, you know? So, uh, yeah, I, like, I don't know how bad this has to get, what kind of like, whether he wants a fig leaf on this. I do think if he, if he does, if he does lift it, like, that's the thing is if he now lifts it really quickly, he looks pretty weak for having put it on for a couple of days. And like, so these tariffs were always more powerful for him prospectively than they are now that they're in place. So I just have no idea.

I also think that, like, the polling on this, you know, you get some polls that show that people are somewhat favorable to tariffs on China, on Chinese goods. But the Canadian tariffs are very unpopular. Mexico is pretty unpopular. Like, they're not popular now. They're going to be even less popular when people are paying a lot more for shit. We'll see how the stock market does, but, like...

I think this is crazy. I don't get the end game, but like, this is what he's been promising to do for a long time. It's the only thing he talks about. He's relentless. He's hellbent. So it's like, it doesn't make sense, but I think he's going to keep doing it because why build up a bunch of nonsense and then stop? I just don't get why he would do this. And, you know, maybe he reduces the Canada and Mexico ones, but he...

spoke at length in the State of the Union tonight about the reciprocal tariffs that are going to affect on April 2nd, not April 1st, because he didn't want everyone to think it was an April Fool's joke. That's what he said. The tariffs on Canada are ostensibly because fentanyl is coming across the border. That's just completely made up. 0.2% of all seizures of fentanyl come across the Canadian border. All of it is coming from Mexico. So why the fuck are we tariffing these people? He can't explain it.

And Trudeau took a bunch of steps to try to address his concerns. They named a fentanyl czar. They spent a bunch of money. They put, like, Black Hawk helicopters on the border and drones and, like, he tariffed them anyway. So fucking stupid. It's like he made up a fake problem. Canada has to then make up a fake solution to the fake problem. I know. And then we still get the tariffs, which have real consequences. Yeah. It's crazy. So then he gets into, starts talking about the rest of the world.

I guess that was a segue talking about Canada and Mexico and the tariffs. And, you know, he had a little bit to say about all the important problems in the world right now. And I also have a message tonight for the incredible people of Greenland. We strongly support your right to determine your own future, but we need it really for international world security.

And I think we're going to get it. One way or the other, we're going to get it. The United States has sent hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defense. Do you want to keep it going for another five years? Yeah, yeah, you would say Pocahontas says yes. A lot of things are happening in the Middle East. People have been talking about that so much.

Lately, with everything going on with Ukraine and Russia, a lot of things are happening in the Middle East. It's a rough neighborhood, actually. That was the Gaza section. It's in-depth. Sarah Longwell made this point, but just that, like, if you showed this to Republicans five, ten years ago and said, this is going to be what you'll be applauding, I'd be like, you're full of shit. No fucking way. This is the dumbest shit I've ever seen. Tough neighborhood. He's going to get Greenland one way or the other. Attacked Elizabeth Warren.

on Ukraine and then the Middle East is a tough neighborhood. I mean, as you know, as you guys know as speechwriters, like the amount of time spent on an issue in the State of the Union is, in the administration's eyes, like directly proportionate to how much we care about it. And so by that definition, his top foreign policy priority is getting Greenland. Yeah, well, that's probably right. We didn't get there, but he also talked about getting the Panama Canal back as well. Yeah, well, he...

he's talking about getting the panama canal back and then that uh that segued into uh some some some love for his secretary of state uh let's hear that club and we have marco rubio in charge good luck marco now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong marco's been amazing and he's gonna do a great job think of it he got a hundred votes

You know, he was approved with actually 99, and I'm either very, very happy about that or I'm very concerned about it. The bar on the Panama Canal keeps changing. Do we want the full canal? I thought we just wanted cheaper rates or maybe to pass through for free. Before, it was about Chinese influence, but today, this Hong Kong-based holding company that owned two ports on either side of the canal sold them to BlackRock. So I thought he was going to take the win on that.

I thought he was going to do more on that, too, when I saw that story. Right. Has he even talked about that story? That's what I've seen. It seems like he's getting what he wants before it became a whole thing. That was a great... I thought it was perfectly timed for the State of the Union. That's why they rolled it out. I thought the Rubio shout-out was notable because I think that Rubio is his patsy on foreign policy. It's so great. And, like, when things... I mean...

He said it tonight, and I think he means it. When things go wrong, he's going to blame it on Marco Rubio. And so his planned annexation of Panama, Canada, Greenland, Gaza. Yeah, it's all on Marco. Marco fucks it up, and that's it. There were a couple of stories...

about Rubio feeling like, you know, he's got his magaminders around him. And there was another story about how he's worried that he's not getting the influence he thought he was going to have. And part of me thought this was a little bit Donald Trump, at least seeing those or hearing about those and kind of like, uh, uh,

bucking them up, you know, kind of giving a little shine in the State of the Union. I felt like it was Michael Corleone kissing Fredo. But like, you know, maybe Middle East is a tough neighborhood covers it, but the Gaza ceasefire is currently falling apart. Yeah. Israel is currently blockading all aid shipments into Gaza. Things are not

on a good trajectory. You'd think you might talk about it. In a normal presidency, I would have taken that, the absence of talking about it, because Trump would normally tout his role in getting that ceasefire as evidence that they think it's falling apart. But who the really fuck knows here? Like, they just decided they want to talk about it.

Right. Why not take the win on getting the ceasefire, getting the hostages back and then using it as a moment to like get everyone in that chamber to applaud for whatever you say about Israel and condemn Hamas? Or that's where you could have gotten everyone on their feet. And just hold on to your seat here. But what if he actually used the speech to send a message about what he wanted? Right. That is the one takeaway from the entire speech is at no point is he using the speech to try to accomplish anything.

Right. I think he sent a pretty powerful message to the Danes. The Danes are shitting their fucking pants right now. He started that section on Greenland by saying, we support whatever the people of Greenland want to do, but we're going to get you one way or the other. Yeah.

That's how he ended it. And there was some stuff in between about how he was going to take Greenland to new heights. Yeah, and initially when he made that comment. What heights? What is he going to do? Trump Greenland? And I don't know if you guys noticed, when he first mentioned Greenland, J.D. Vance and Speaker Johnson kind of started chuckling. And then by the end, they were like, oh. They were excited about the Greenland question. Yeah. It's real. One way or the other.

So that was foreign policy. And then he did a bunch of, he called out people in the guest box. He does that. There's a couple of stunts. What else stood out to you guys in the speech? And then there was like five endings that were like literally copy pasted from other Trump speeches. It's about like crossing new frontiers and going to the moon and all that bullshit. Yeah.

we should talk about the stunts a little bit some of the some of the stunts right so we had there was one moment that was actually like kind of sweet where there's this boy that had had some kind of cancer and has like wanted to be a police officer and clearly they didn't know how long he was going to live so he became honorary police officer and then he made him an honorary member of the secret service and he had a really sweet look on his face and i found that moving and then some more cynical people ripped me to pieces

But then it became, and actually RFK Jr. is going to look into the chemical causes of various illnesses. And by the way, we're going to go after autism. He insinuated that it came from chemicals, which Maha's got to fix. And then we got to go to autism. It was a really weird transition. And then you remember that he's...

currently gutting the National Institutes of Health. That's where the transgender mice research was done, but also some cancer research that you might've been familiar with. And he's going after Medicaid and he's going after, and by the way, he launched an insurrection against the police at the Capitol in which this event was taking place. So yes, it is a cynical thing, but the moment did work on me. He did admit one guy to West Point too. Yeah, that was good too. That was good too. Want to rank the stunts? I can't remember.

but I remember him doing this in his previous State of the Union, during his first terms. They weren't just calling out people in the box, in the First Lady's box. It was like...

like announcing something for them, some kind of award. He gets, he gets very, not just the Rush Limbaugh. He gets very Oprah here, right? Yes, it is. Yeah, he resigned in executive order. Yeah, Jay Mark called it his Ed McMahon section of the speech. Really dated cultural reference even for us. Yeah. And then there was like the slightly, there was, not slightly, then there was like the darker version of it, right? Which is like kind of

going through people that have been grievously harmed by whether it's immigrants or a trans athlete, and then like naming a national preserve after the victim of a terrible murder and like to draw attention to, you know, anti-immigrant sentiment and all the rest. So like that was, that was pretty ugly, but like the most, I mean, because a lot of the speech was like sort of a mix of yes, it's sort of normal, normal speeches as president and his stump speech is sort of grievance, some speech, like the kind of the parts that did stand out other than like Greenland was, was,

Where are these stunts? Only time Medicaid was mentioned the entire night was Al Green. Nice. Donald Trump never mentioned Medicaid or Medicare, which I thought was kind of interesting. Like, usually he'd do the, I'm going to protect it and I'm not going to cut it in this budget, but he didn't even mention it at all. I mean, I guess it is noteworthy that if he does not pass a tax cut bill, taxes will go up on nearly every American.

And that's a very challenging thing to do. It's not a nice to have. It is a must-do. It is an absolute must-do. And I would also say embedded in that exact bill is the bill to lift the debt limit. So he has to – if he does not pass this bill, we're going to default and everyone's going to get a tax increase. And he has Congress before him.

He has a massively divided Republican Party. They're divided on both the policy, the spending measures to pay for this, and the legislative process to accomplish it. He used none of this speech with all of them there to try to rally them to any sort of cause. He talked a little bit about the tax cut, but they have no plan to solve this problem. And he cannot be bothered to try to get into the minutiae of trying to pass a bill. Well, but it makes sense when you realize that he is not trying to make a case for

that wins him any kind of public opinion. He's not trying to pressure these people in public because what the White House does, what this White House does, is just like threaten them in private. And so he probably thinks, I'm going to talk about my accomplishments and have a good time, and I'm going to deal with getting the sausage made with my people on my own. Right. I think, right. I also, it's just like, it's sort of...

it's an unsolvable problem there's no like rhetorical fix for it like the circles in the venn diagram do not overlap like tom cotton stood up at some senate republican caucus meeting today and it's like hey guys like we're far apart from what the house wants to do we're talking about all these tax cuts for the rich we've got to focus on the parts that are for the working class like there's like a real there's a this there's no solve right now for this what's he gonna say yes he's not persuading people to anything and it's because thun said before tom cotton got up

The House is asking for a trillion dollars in cuts. We've never done that in a reconciliation bill. Like I could see the most we've done is like $400 billion in cuts. And I still think that they are going to try to, the easiest thing for them to do is not go deep on the cuts and say that the bullshit Doge cuts, you know, puff them up and lie about how much money they saved, do a huge tax cut.

Because they can get everyone on board with that, figure something out about the debt limit, which I don't know what it is, and maybe he's going to fucking mint the coin or get rid of the debt limit or say it doesn't matter, and then just pass something that just adds to the deficit, a couple trillion dollars, gives rich people a tax cut, and then cuts where they can. That feels like the way that they'd get out of this, or the whole thing falls apart. Yes.

Just you would typically use that moment to at least express urgency to be able to get your shit together in that moment. And you're right. Like maybe the old – there is no solution here that does not involve a large swath of the Republicans voting for something they swore they would never vote for one way or the other, right? Unpaid for, paid for, cut Medicaid, don't cut Medicaid. Or they can just fucking lie and just put some –

you know, do some gimmick in there about, yes, the Doge cuts, but say like, we're going to do this amount of cuts in the coming years, right? They can do some trickery with math. Well, they could also sunset some of the tax cuts to keep the cost a certain way down, right? Push a decision on tax cuts, like, you know, do cuts over 10 years, do the tax cuts over three. Like there's like, there's games they still have room to play with. But even when they get to that, there's still a massive delta between the money going out and the money coming in. Yeah, yeah, right.

Right. And they can't. They can do all their games, but someone's going to report that. Yeah, math is math. Any other things that stand out to you guys from the speech? I thought it was really weird when he had Kash Patel, his new FBI director, stand up and get a standing ovation. It just felt like the Praetorian Guard was all in the room and we were supposed to see them.

It just bothered me a lot. Yeah, he also called out Pam Bondi a few times. Yep. She's going to get the dead people collecting Social Security that don't exist. Right. She's going to arrest a spreadsheet, I guess, with some names on it of dead people. Filing error. Pod Save America is brought to you by Lumen.

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Head to squarespace.com for a free trial. And when you're ready to launch, go to squarespace.com slash crooked to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. That's squarespace.com slash crooked. Should we talk about the Democratic response? Oh, yeah, the Democrats. Lissa Slotkin, new senator from Michigan. She gave the Democratic response. And then there were other Democratic responses. We already talked about Al Green.

There was also a bunch of Democrats that held signs up that said false. They were dressed in different ways. And then a bunch of people just, a couple people left the speech. Some of them came back. Yeah, I was going to say, I think Maxwell Frost and someone else left early. And then later Bernie left.

and then a couple other people left. Like it was sort of a, there was no like specific words that triggered them leaving. I think if I were them, I would have left just because I was very bored and it was very long and I was tired. Leaving early is really funny. We're on West Coast time and we're tired. Yeah. Leaving early is like walking out of a movie just to show you hate it. Yeah. I walked out of a pretty bad production of Rent once.

But it wasn't a protest. It just wasn't a good production. I was ready to go home. Got it. I think Alyssa Slotkin did a good job. I think, like, those speeches are the hardest ones to give of any speech. I don't even know why people still do state of the art response. Like, they are remembered if you fuck up. And if you do well, they're not remembered. I think it was

It was short. She delivered it well. And she like hit the message that I'm sure is going to poll well. Like I bet it probably did – the speech did well with whatever focus groups of voters were watching it.

And then there's this debate that's happening online right now about like should the Democrats have gone at all? Should they not have gone at all? Which we sort of started talking about. On the Slotkin thing, if I were to offer her advice, I would say ditch the cliches. We don't need to say things are as American as apple pie. I would say if you can do the setting over again, have some people there, give it some energy, not just sort of in a random room. I agree. She delivered it really well.

It was tight. It had a message. It was coherent. It was just like a little bit – it felt like it was from a pre-Trump era. And I think in the post-Trump era, like we all need to think about ways to really get people's attention and make a speech memorable in a way that will go viral on TikTok and Instagram and be seen by more people than whoever is still watching MSNBC. It's an interesting thing because –

It is a format optimized for the free television time. Right. Because you are – the networks carry it. They all carry it. And so more people will see Alyssa Slotkin's speech than any speech given by a Democrat this year by a factor of 10, 15, 20, more maybe. In full-on television. In full-on television. Right. But if you were trying to monitor and communicate, you would not give a 10-minute two-camera response. You would –

to a 10-minute podcast interview or whatever, or like a conversation. Yeah, I think there's sort of three things. One, if you're going to go all the way to Michigan to deliver it, why are you standing in front of kind of a standard American flag set that could have been a closed room anywhere? So I sort of didn't understand the setting. I thought the speech was...

solid. But like, and it's not even a criticism of her or the speech. It's like, yes, there's the question of like, well, is, you know, this is, it's, it's a, it's a television format, not a social media format. But then there's just this

is part of it i don't have an answer but it's like we just watched a carnival barker lie and kind of squeal for 90 minutes vilifying all kinds of people willfully lying making things up about social security kind of attacking president bragging about his electoral record just sort of like just showing like utter contempt for the country

And then we do kind of what is the kind of the adult in the room standard? Here's the response, the message that tests well, the proper kind of Reagan references. And just sort of like this is designed to meet, but to appeal to a broad range of people. We do normal politics, right?

And I don't know like what the alternative to that is that works, but there is just something dissonant about it. There's something wrong about it. Like Donald Trump does what Donald Trump does. And then we get up there and we do what we would do if Mitt Romney had won or if, if, if Marco Rubio had won or whatever. And I, yeah, I know. And I, and I think the challenge is half the country.

thinks that we are in normal politics right the guy's got a you know approval rating of at worst depending on the poll you look at 45 best 51 50 so that's like a whole bunch of people who if she had gotten up there any democrat had got up there and said something like this is a moment of urgency and can you believe that or just that guy was crazy or he was a carnival barker all the stuff that we've been saying with a lot of people would land like yeah i don't know you know what here's the thing i'd say about that but i don't know that's what i'm saying so like that i like

I think there could be room for that. But then the question is, what is the goal of a response? This gets to the heart of like the entire Democratic response, the people on the floor, Al Green, everything else. Like, what is the goal of what we are trying to do in responding to Donald Trump's speech? And who are we trying to reach and who are we trying to convince? So there's a big dilemma here, which is without fail, the best testing messages, the ones that show up as most persuasive are

feel incredibly small ball compared to what's happening here. And not that cutting Medicaid is small ball, because that is a devastating thing for so many people, but it just feels like we're on the brink of

authoritarianism in this country. And it feels like we're just using the same message we used against Mitt Romney in 2012. Doesn't seem like the right feel here, but the polling is crystal clear. The one piece of advice that I would give to Democrats, and I've been wrestling with this myself for the last couple weeks here, is there is no election tomorrow, the next day. There are elections in November, but they are state elections. We

We do not have to respond to how people think about Donald Trump right now. We have to make how people think about Donald Trump be different by November of 2026. Right. And that, I think, is—I think that implores us to step away from the quote-unquote best testing message right now and do a little bit more what I think Chris Murphy is doing, which is to be a little more sort of

just sort of authentically ranting about the dangers that are happening. And like, this is this, this is the fundamental difference between Democrats and Republicans is Democrats find out where we're voters are. And then we try to meet them there. And Republicans try to get the voters to where they want them to be. And I think we have to, we have to just think a little bigger here, play a bigger game than we have been playing. I think then I feel like, I feel like I'm going crazy having this debate over and over again, because we like keep going on both sides of it. Like we're,

Kamala Harris loses the election and we're all like, there's too much democracy, too much scary, this, that, the other thing, authoritarianism, people don't care about that, should have talked more about cost, inflation, stuff like that. And then, okay, great. So now all the Democrats are like, we got to talk about the price of eggs, we got to drive a message about inflation, we got to talk about cost. And then...

Donald Trump does what he does over the last month and it's like, we can't fucking talk about that. We have to talk. And I'm there. I'm like, we have to talk. I would talk. I would respond to it like Chris Murphy has responded. But I think this is where you square the difference though. Kamala Harris has been in a very difficult position because she only had 100 days. Like,

She couldn't, like, a third of the country completely woke up to the threat of Trump. A third likes it. A third was more concerned about their daily experience, what was happening in their lives. And waking them up to the threat of democracy just wasn't going to happen. We didn't have the credibility. She didn't have the credibility, right? So you have to, so that's where the mistake there is, right? But now, like-

Let's try to wake some more people up, right? Like, no, yes, we should talk about the price of eggs, but like we have to, I think we should like, like, yes, I think that we can't just assume that this is static. Like Donald Trump is an authoritarian threat. Not enough people care about that. Not enough people care when he sides against Ukraine, when he pulls all these stunts, when he talks about evading Greenland, right? Like too many people are kind of, uh,

uh, uh, inured to it or asleep to it or not paying attention. And that's part of why we're in this mess. I think the one, like one way that I think also helps square the circle is to start talking about the corruption. Like, I'm not saying we should use the word kleptocracy to describe this because that is a ridiculous term to use, but that is the story here, right? Like we have a bunch of oligarchs running this country. We have the world's richest man ruining through things. And the value of corruption as a message is one, it's true.

Two, it allows us, if we could get our heads out of our asses, to become a reformed party again. Because we're not trying to defend the status quo. We're trying to reform it in a way that actually helps people instead of just burning the fucking thing down. And that at least is – there's a point where Slaukin sort of moved around, which is, is it –

Is it crazy change that is chaotic and hurts people, or is it real change that can actually help people? Yeah, and I thought that was strong. It's funny because as I listened to that speech, I thought the strong part of the speech was the end when she talked about democracy. And then there's the little part of my head that's like, probably not the most popular part of the speech, but I feel like that resonates and it was true.

Yeah, but I do think part of that too is we're so far from an election that Democrats getting up there and saying, here's exactly what I'll do to help on the economy just rings a little hollow right now. So we got to get closer to the election where you can have like an agenda. Like, you know, you back up a corruption message with we're going to make white collar crime the priority of the Justice Department again.

Like we're going to go after these tax cheats. We're going to go after the crypto fraudsters. Like you need, you need to let like that kind of energy and a kind of list of things that you can do. Imagine a version of her speech that is entirely focused on Elon Musk in Doge cuts and going through all the mistakes and fuck ups that

in great detail like he did. Like, she did a little bit of this. She did the things that we've all been hitting, the nuclear weapons people who were fired, the Social Security Health Administration. But imagine you tick through all of that. It's like, Doge is this unbelievable threat. It's the only thing we should care about. Here's my focus. It's a really interesting idea. That's just different. That's actually a really smart way to think about it, not a credit, which is,

use that free 10 minutes of national television time and attention you get to try to win one battle, not try to win the entire war. Right. Which is an impossible task given to any person in any party. Yeah. Although the thing I saw a lot of like media outlets and God bless them, this is their job, they're supposed to

give us the facts. There's like a lot of fact-checking after the speech, and I was like, I can't do the fact-checking. I don't think fact-checking him is... I mean, it's helpful to point out that he's bullshit, but like, I don't know where it's getting us. I think there are parts of it, like the Social Security thing is very important to point out. Right. Because you're just going to have conversations with people. Like, that's the sort of thing that people are going to be like, you're like, Elon Musk is a fucking nutjob. Well,

Yeah, but I heard that they were paying off, you know, a million 150-year-old Social Security. Like, having the facts to that is a helpful pushback. It's also, by the way, like, at this point, like, I agree. Like, these stories specifically, I don't know what they get us. But then, like, we just don't really know or have a good way of measuring. Like, okay, some creator somewhere is going to take that and make a TikTok or make a video that kind of walks through the ways it was alive. One of them will take off. It will get in front of a lot of people. And so, like... Well, this is... And this is where I was...

at the beginning where you're talking about Al Green and I was like a little flippant and being like, I don't think it matters either way. I guess we're having this debate over like, what's the most effective message? What's the most effective Democrat? I guess I don't blame any of them for trying, right? Like if you wanted to hold a sign, if you wanted to walk out, if you wanted to stay, if you want to give a list of Slotkin's type speech, if you want to do something else, like whatever, like you said, the election is not till 2026. Everyone should try. Some stuff's going to take off. Some stuff isn't going to take off. As long as people are like,

you know, going out there and giving it their all. You guys see this CNN Instant Snap poll? Is it, let's see. 44% very positive reviews of Trump's speech. 44% very positive, 25% somewhat positive, 31% negative. So, yeah.

That's actually not that... For a State of the Union, that doesn't matter. He has traditionally had positive reviews of Estates of the Union that aren't as positive as the previous ones. There's a little more numbers. Yeah, I know what I'm saying. They're all positive, but his are not. 66% say his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. 34%, the wrong direction. That's a little better for him. 80% say Congressman Al Green's interruption was inappropriate. Yeah, that's...

shot her. I mean, these are always worth noting polls of people who actually watch the speech, which almost always skews to the party of the person giving the speech. Yeah. This also, by the way, goes to like... This is what I was saying on the live stream about the protest walking out because like, you know what? People thought Joe Wilson was an asshole when he said to Barack Obama that he lied. People thought Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were assholes when they interrupted Joe Biden. Like when you interrupt someone, most people think you're an asshole. But this is part of the thing when you're like...

If the message, Donald Trump did not bring up Medicaid. Al Green brought up Medicaid, right? Sometimes, we're not, no election for two years. Sometimes the shit that's going to drive an important message maybe doesn't make you look good for a beat, right? Like it doesn't always have to be like we're down to Al Green's, Al Green's in a safe district. You know, it's like, it's just like, good for him. Like he got people to talk about the Medicaid cuts. I think that's a good thing. I will just, I will have no patience for people complaining about the etiquette of it. No. Well, I also have very little patience for people like Al Green's outburst.

didn't help Democrats as if like,

a Democrat who's not Al Green is going to somehow be hurt by what Al Green, like I have no. Do you think it'll be more or less impactful than Donna Brazile's book right before the Virginia governor's election? That's a deep, that is a deep story. I don't even remember what it was about. I don't even know the full story. But do you remember it? But I, yes, of course I remember it. God, I do remember that. But what was it? We'll talk off mic. All right, before we go, we did the live stream before and we all bet on how long the speech was going to be.

And so we had Price is Right rules. And let's see. Tommy guessed 62 minutes. The next person was me. I guessed 81 minutes. Dan guessed 85 minutes. But the winner...

is love it i won with 86 minutes wow i know we thought originally it was dan but adrian corrected me and we have a trophy oh my god look at that wow love it figured out i've i've never done well in uh any kind of uh game show before uh famously so this has been great congratulations what it would have been like to me make it through one fucking vote who were the big winners of donald trump's speech tonight

According to the polls, Donald Trump. But according to us, John Lovett. Yeah, thanks a lot. No, that feels really good. It feels really good. All right, everyone. We'll be back with an episode. Dan and I will be back with an episode. What day is it? Friday. Friday we'll have an episode. We'll talk to you then.

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