Trump’s State of the Union Address: Division, Delusion, Dishonesty

Donald Trump exceeded extraordinarily low expectations on Tuesday night when he delivered a State of the Union address that largely stuck to the script.

In our preview of his speech, we predicted that “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.”

We certainly got that part right. Trump broke his own record for the longest State of the Union address, fact-checkers will have to work through the night to explain all of the ways in which he lied, exaggerated, and misled, and, of course, there is this:

BEST SOTU EVER!!!

— Stephen Miller (@StephenM) February 25, 2026

However, we are less sure about the second part of our prediction, which was that the president would deliver the kind of speech that would make Americans more likely to vote the GOP out of office in November.

That’s because Trump largely avoided the pitfalls that come with giving a malignant narcissist such a grand stage. He rarely strayed beyond his prepared remarks, and Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA), who sat behind him, probably breathed a few sighs of relief that he just read what was on the teleprompter instead of ad-libbing.

Or, perhaps, they were just out of breath from dutifully rising every few seconds to pay homage to the boss with standing ovations.

Trump even managed a couple of moments that will be replayed endlessly on Fox News and included in GOP campaign commercials.

He told the assembled lawmakers, dignitaries and guests to stand up if they agreed with the statement that the “first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens not illegal aliens.” Democrats, who withheld their applause for most of the night, remained seated, and we’ll never hear the end of it.

It’s a cheap trick, but one that perhaps makes more Democrats wish that they had followed the examples of some of their colleagues and skipped the speech altogether.

And they should have.

The State of the Union address is a relic from a different era — one in which Americans rarely heard from their commanders in chief in person, when there was some degree of comity between the parties, and when presidents largely told the truth.

Now, Trump is omnipresent, he lies constantly, and partisanship is at a post-Civil War high.

Therefore, the Democrats might have been better off if they had refused to participate in this charade.

Then again, we doubt that this address will have moved the needle.

It was simply too much Trump, and Americans have clearly had their fill of the president, as his plunging approval ratings show.

Most importantly, the president’s rhetoric cannot mask the reality that people are struggling. He can talk about a “a golden age” and claim that the “nation is back, bigger, better, richer, and stronger than before,” but families trying to make ends meet, people losing their health insurance and food stamps, and everybody who witnessed masked government goons gunning down two citizens in Minnesota know that this isn’t true.

Trump may be an acceptable president to Americans when things are going well, but his boisterous style just doesn’t work well in a crisis. We saw that during the coronavirus pandemic, and we are seeing it again now.

For Republicans not to get routed during the midterms, they have to hope that the economy turns around quickly.

And not only are we seeing few signs of that, but the president’s signature economic policy, the tariffs he imposed on much of the world, are hurting consumers by serving as another tax on them and US businesses.

But, even after the Supreme Court ruled them to be illegal, Trump left no doubt that he will keep pursuing these tariffs and even promised that they would “substantially replace the modern-day system of [the] income tax.”

And that highlights a big part of his current problem: He overpromises and underdelivers.

Of course, we doubt that most people will have watched the speech long enough to get to that part… and we certainly can’t blame them.

In the end, this State of the Union was a non-event and should have been an email.