Donald Trump has had, without question, a first fourteenish months in office that is hard to top in any other administration of my lifetime in accomplishments. And to be fair, it would also be correct to say that no president has stirred up more angst and controversy among his detractors than any other administration in a similar time period.
After last week’s press conference at the White House a day after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision on the tariffs case, Donald Trump’s contempt for the majority opinion was so palpable that one of the questions going into last night’s State of the Union was how soon and how hard the President would rhetorically apply the Trump tattoo to the justices present in the joint session of Congress.
Trump certainly had words, but they were tempered and not made personal. In fact, for virtually the entirety of the address, which came in a few ticks under two hours, the speech was about the best speech Donald Trump has ever delivered.
At times, establishing the narrative that real progress has been made on economic problems created and/or exacerbated by the Biden Regency, and at other points a celebration of American excellence, whether in sports, or bravery, courage, and resilience in all walks of life, this was simply a State of the Union speech unlike any other we’ve heard. And that is a very, very good thing.
Regardless of who occupies the building at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, the State of the Union address, as the saying goes, always devolves into a laundry list of spending requests or new government programs that sound and feel good at the time, but don’t have a prayer of getting passed or funded, because of the huge national debt we’re carrying. This speech was not that at all. Unlike all previous affairs, Donald Trump did not mention one new spending program he wanted Congress to pass. Not one.
What we got instead was a grand tour of the absolute best of America. Donald Trump, when he had won all seven swing states and the popular vote on the first Tuesday of November 2024, said in interviews and press conferences in the days and weeks after that America’s success would serve as his ultimate revenge. Never Trump, Inc., whether it be Resistance media, elected Democrats, and/or neurotically broken former Republicans that can’t come to grips with the fact that Donald Trump survived them, convinced themselves that Trump would be a dictator and an authoritarian, and for the next four years, it would be a nightmare retribution tour. The fact that Donald Trump gave a speech delivering on what he promised, succeeding by recognizing the greatness and successes of others, drove them crazy.
Ever since Donald Trump came down the escalator at Trump Tower in Manhattan in 2015, the attempt by Never Trump, Inc. was to marginalize him as being unstable and crazy. And Donald Trump has certainly provided antics over the years to give that criticism backing. But last night, Donald Trump really de-emphasized himself in the spotlight, which is what knocked so many Democrats off their footing. He put the spotlight on heroes. He brought in the U.S. Men’s Hockey team. The President, just days after the Olympics in Milan, posted his own medal count of six – two Congressional Medals of Honor, one Presidential Medal of Freedom, two Purple Hearts, and a Legion of Merit.
Trump recognized and honored survivors of violent crime by illegal aliens. He honored philanthropists who have gotten the Trump Savings Accounts off the board and into reality for a whole new generation of Americans. It was Donald Trump demonstrating his love for the country by showing off Americans, young and old, of all ideological and racial stripes, revealing the character of the country.
Democrats, with really only one notable exception being Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman, used what is probably the opening battle in the 2026 Midterms to make Donald Trump look like the normie by comparison. And whenever that happens, Democrats are headed for electoral disaster.
Whoever is in the White House has the advantage with these addresses. They have weeks or months to prepare and stagecraft it. They have a built-in television audience. Unless the speech is a complete clunker and the writers commit malpractice, the president’s party gets a win for the night. The goal for the opposition party should always be to take the loss and minimize the damage. You do that by not trying to upstage the president and looking like jerks in the process. Could the Democrats do that? Nah.
There were two shadow Democratic events planned and executed to serve as places of refuge where the more radical Trump-hating members could go and hang out and not get themselves, and the party, into too much trouble by disrupting the speech and looking horrible to the American people. The problem was that a sizeable amount of the radical members of Congress stayed in the chamber anyway, and they had much more elbow room to spread out and really have at it, while at the alternate sites, members showed up on stage with people in animal costumes flanking them.
One of several takeaway moments of the State of the Union was when Donald Trump baited Democrats into a trap they should have seen coming, telling them to applaud the protection of young people from being captured by the trans lobby. Trump introduced a young woman who escaped that lifestyle and received a long ovation. When Democrats sat on their hands, this is what happened.
Fact check: True. They are crazy. And you don’t have to take Trump’s word for it. We have the receipts.
Here’s the MC of one of the shadow Democratic SOTU events, Robby Roadsteamer, in a giraffe costume, shouting like he’s been smoking Kools since he was five.
Or how about Oregon Rep. Maxine Dexter, backed by frogs.
At the other shadow Dem rally, former M-SNOW host Joy Reid busted out in song.
Chuck Schumer, the minority leader of the Democrats in the United States Senate, appeared on CNN with John Berman and made the claim that Democrats in the chamber were restrained…as CNN was showing B-Roll of Ilhan Omar screaming at Trump like Captain Phillips’ captor.
Virginia Rep. Suhas Subramanyam was on C-SPAN and complained that Donald Trump tried to corner them. Of course, there was nothing about Democrats being too stupid to recognize that there was a relatively easy way to defeat that trap by *checks notes* being normal and applauding what 90% of the country would applaud, like mothers of crime victims, gold medal sports heroes, and military heroes that are absolute studs.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz was on NewsNation with Leland Vittert, who asked her why they couldn’t be respectful, and Schultz could only answer in non-sequiters.
Rep. Robin Kelly was on a Zoom roundtable after the speech, mocking the heroes and veterans that were honored at the SOTU, a bona fide winner of a strategy, I’m sure.
The highlight of the night, and the most telling to all normie Americans, was when the President asked everyone to stand if they believed the following line – The government is there to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens. Democrats didn’t move.
Afterwards, C-SPAN caught up with Rep. Janelle Bynum, who was uncomfortable when Trump said that. She called it, naturally, racist.
If you had any doubt about who looked normal and who looked like radical crazies, here’s Dave Portnoy last night.
Trump called them crazy. Portnoy called them psychotic. I don’t know, giraffe suits, frog choruses, Joy Reid saying she became physically ill at honoring American heroes seems pretty crazy and psychotic to me. And yes, Behar went there.
There were lots of reasons why Donald Trump won in 2024. But included among those many reasons were the Democrats acting like absolute lunatics running against him. Kamala Harris was nuts. Joe Biden’s team before her was not normal. The Biden Regency’s policies for the previous four years were not normal. By comparison, Donald Trump looked like the normie.
The economy is going to be the principal reason people vote Republican or Democrat this November in the midterms. There certainly can be Trump fatigue over other issues, but as James Carville has always said, it’s the economy, stupid. By the time we get to the fall, either it’s going to feel better for voters across the country, or it isn’t. I’m confident that Trump’s policies of the first year will translate into an economy that is absolutely cooking in year two.
But if you’re the Democrats, as my friend Jim Talent, former senator from Missouri, often says, you can’t beat something with nothing. And Democrats currently are facing a scenario that they not only have nothing, but they have nothing wrapped in animal suits. Crazy and empty isn’t a winning message, but it’s what is shaping up to be their central campaign message.
Between the Republican National Committee, the campaign committees in the House and Senate, and Donald Trump’s campaign war chest, there’s over a billion dollars that can be brought to bear by November, and the Democrats last night alone provided the source material for hundreds of Republican ads to come. The Democrats are still currently in debt, not having yet paid off Kamala Harris’ Sauv Blanc tab. They’ll eventually have the cash on hand to compete, but the only thing on which they have to run right now is ‘Trump bad’. That may not be enough to secure the normie vote.
Just wait until the America 250 celebration gets into full swing this summer. Think the Democrats are going to suddenly wrap themselves in the flag and join arm-in-arm with everyone else honoring how exceptional this country has become? Or will they do to the semiquincentennial what they just did with the State of the Union? My bet is they’ll try to trash it, believing it’s a winning strategy to slag anything or anyone that makes people feel good about being Americans, because it might help Trump.
Donald Trump gave the Republicans the roadmap for electoral success last night. Elect good candidates in the primaries, focus on the successes and the goodness available in this country, and marginalize the left as the radicals they are. Pass the SAVE Act in order to minimize Democrats’ ability to recruit illegal aliens to vote.
Stay positive, mock the negative, and stay normal. Normal is good. Normal works.
Editor’s note: We now have the room to run syndicated commentary by some of our favorite and most provocative thinkers on the Right. That only happens because of the support of our readers, who ensure that we have the resources to keep providing an independent platform and independent voices in a sea of Protection Racket Media domination.
Help us maintain that fight! Join Hot Air VIP and use promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your membership.
