Trump Is the Worst Choice to Address a Union in Disarray

Listen To This Story

We have no idea what Donald Trump is going to say during his State of the Union address Tuesday night (although, if your bingo card for the speech includes “eight wars,” “trillions,” “hottest,” and “Sleepy Joe,” then you are likely in pretty good shape). In fact, we doubt that anybody really knows what the president is going to say since he could just wander off script at any moment and do “the weave.”

If we had to guess, it’ll primarily be a bunch of lies about how great the country is doing, an extensive airing of Trump’s grievances, and another broadside against democracy. You’ll hear something about all the wars the president supposedly ended and how the US has entered a new “golden age” (and about how anything that isn’t amazing is Joe Biden’s fault).

What we do know is that Trump is just about the worst person to talk about the state of the union because the reality is starkly different from the delusional fantasy the president is going to create in his speech.

In truth, regular Americans are struggling. Prices for groceries and other essentials remain high, job growth is anemic, Trump’s tariffs are a tax on US businesses and consumers, and Republicans are shredding the country’s flimsy safety net. Perhaps most importantly, after promising to fix it all, the president and his party haven’t delivered.

And it’s not just the economy.

It is not lost on voters that this administration is the most authoritarian in US history. Masked goons are roaming communities across the nation, citizens and immigrants alike are harassed, some of them killed, and Americans are feeling less safe.

Internationally, Trump is alienating and threatening allies, and he is on the verge of plunging the country into a major conflict.

Finally, the administration’s lawlessness and corruption are as evident as its attempts to stand in the way of full transparency in the case of Jeffrey Epstein, which only raises more questions about the president’s involvement.

For all of these reasons, it is hardly surprising that there are only three groups of people who believe that the country isn’t worse off today than a year ago. The first is Trump voters, a whopping 85 percent of whom say things are better now than at the start of the president’s term (of course, just as many of his supporters would say that up is down or that ignorance is strength).

Then there are white evangelicals (66 percent) and rural Americans (52 percent). Of course, members of that last group may soon change their mind once they realize that the GOP’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” includes a net cut of $100 billion in rural health funding.

To be fair, the survey didn’t poll billionaires or members of the Trump family separately. We imagine that they are also much better off now than last year.

At a time of this economic malaise and uncertainty, as well as general upheaval, most of which the president either caused or failed to fix after vowing that he would, comes Trump’s first State of the Union address of his second term.

We can’t think of a worse person to deliver it.

Ideally, what the nation needs now is a healer, someone who can bring the country together. A leader who can empathize with the plight of American families trying to make ends meet, and someone they believe can make things better. Trump is none of those things.

He is a reality-denying braggadocious narcissist who will never admit that things under his leadership aren’t going well. But, according to various polls, Americans believe they are worse off now than under Biden. If Trump didn’t live in a fantasy world, that one would really sting. Fortunately for him, he does, which is why insisted on Monday that the “real polls,” i.e., those that only exist in his head, show him doing great.

Therefore, it would be wrong to say that we have low expectations for Trump’s address. We have none.

More likely than not, he’ll drone on for way too long, lie too much, and, in the end, his supporters will proclaim that it was the greatest speech ever delivered by any man. As for the rest of the country, we imagine that they will be more determined than ever to sweep the GOP out of power in November.