CNN
—
Modern America’s political chasm never looked so bleak.
President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night adopted the customs of a familiar annual political observance. But they failed to bridge the chasm of misunderstanding and contempt cleaving the country down the middle.
“Mr. Speaker, the president of the United States” roared the House sergeant at arms in his fabled refrain before Trump entered the House of Representatives.
It was one of the only normal moments on a night that exemplified broken national unity as the president embarks on a second term that millions believe will usher in a new American golden age and millions more fear will destroy the country they love.
On Trump’s left were his adoring, raucous followers, who leapt to their feet repeatedly, cheering “USA, USA, USA,” and “Trump, Trump, Trump,” on the benches of the Republican Party he has transformed beyond all recognition into a personal political movement.
His speech was indistinguishable from his campaign rallies, which pulsated with flaming rhetoric, falsehoods and demagoguery.
But the trinity of the president, Vice President JD Vance and Speaker Mike Johnson on the House dais spoke of unbridled GOP power, as Senate Majority leader John Thune and conservative Supreme Court justices looked on from below.
This wasn’t officially a State of the Union address, so Trump didn’t offer the classic line from a president’s annual report. But on the evidence of Tuesday night’s primetime show, the state of MAGA is dominant.
The state of Democrats, meanwhile, is impotent.
Some of the opposition party’s top figures didn’t even bother to show up. Those who did mostly sat stone-faced, rigid and silent in their seats. But Texas Rep Al Green stood and heckled Trump, shaking his cane and ignoring Johnson’s calls for him to sit down. He was ejected by heavies from the office of the sergeant at arms to hoots and hollers from the Republican benches. It was an ugly, angry scene, but did much to personify the country’s divides.
Some Democrats held up placards reading “liar” or “false,” while others walked out — gestures that, along with Green’s lonely protest, served mostly to highlight the party’s limp and uncoordinated resistance to a president claiming almost unlimited power.
Annual addresses by presidents have become more tense and charged in recent years and have seen Republicans berate Democratic presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Trump did conjure several moments of humanity that highlighted worthy Americans, including when he directed that 13-year-old brain cancer survivor DJ Daniel be sworn in as a Secret Service agent.
But he made almost no effort to reach beyond his political base. Instead, a president who was appearing in the House chamber for the first time since his supporters ransacked it on January 6, 2021, put the sole blame for a crisis of national disunity on his opponents. He ignored the impact of his own politics which, more than those of any other president in recent times, are rooted in widening divides. He frequently slammed Biden, a continued fixation for Trump even after the Democrat’s dejected exit from the public stage, and used a racial insult against Massachusetts Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
“This is my fifth such speech to Congress, and once again, I look at the Democrats in front of me and I realize there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy or to make them stand or smile or applaud,” Trump said.
“I could find a cure to the most devastating disease — a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history — or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded. And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements.”
CNN political commentator David Axelrod, a former top Obama aide, summed up the mood by playing off one of Trump’s “wins” — the renaming of the Gulf of Mexico. “Speaking of gulfs, the chasm between the parties at this moment might properly be called the Gulf of America,” he wrote in a post on CNN’s online expert analysis livestream.
While it was often dispiriting, Tuesday night’s political theater did at least clarify where the country stands.
Trump personifies an authentic slice of America’s natural character a quarter of the way into the 21st century — nationalistic; hostile to foreign entanglements; tired of undocumented migration and the perceived “woke” overreach of liberals on diversity and gender issues; and firm in the belief that the elites who run government are enemies of the people.
The president entered the address following the most concentrated start to a new presidency since Franklin Roosevelt in 1933 — although the Democrat forged more lasting change in a blizzard of legislation that was more permanent than the executive actions signed by Trump.
Trump’s new mantra is “common sense” — a catch-all that justifies Elon Musk’s evisceration of the federal government; Trump’s effort to impose a peace on Ukraine that favors Russia; his imposition Tuesday of massive tariffs designed to protect homegrown businesses; and his extraordinary appeal on live television to the people of Greenland to split with Denmark and to join the United States. (Polls suggest the people of Greenland aren’t interested.)
To many Americans, away from the cities and the suburbs where most Democrats live, this does indeed seem like common sense and Trump’s shock and awe start to his term is a down payment on his promises.
“America is back,” Trump said. “Our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed and perhaps will never witness again.” He went on: “It has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action. The people elected me to do the job, and I am doing it.”
But Trump was also elected to fix soaring prices for groceries and housing — after Biden and his successor as Democratic nominee, former vice president Kamala Harris, had few answers on one of the top issues of last year’s election. There was little evidence Tuesday that Trump had much of a plan to fix these issues either. He blamed his predecessor for the sky-high price of eggs — but in reality a widening bird flu scare has pushed the cost to its peak on his watch.
Trump made no mention of the recent plunge by stock markets spooked by his introduction of 25% tariffs on Canada and Mexico on Tuesday — or the likelihood that the duties could further increase prices when consumer confidence is dipping and there are alarming signs of slipping economic growth.
And as usual, much of what Trump said was untrue. He didn’t, as he said, inherit an economic catastrophe from Biden. His claim that foreign countries had emptied their asylums into American was not true. And he massively overinflated the true tally of the billions of dollars the Biden administration gave to Ukraine.
While Trump is a hero to his supporters, many other Americans believe his policies will not make America great again but obliterate the values and mission that have built national greatness over generations.
With his tariffs, his embrace of autocrats and his contempt for democracy at home and abroad, Trump is simultaneously dismantling the national security and free trade structures that made America the richest and most powerful nation in history. His power grabs since returning to the White House are threatening the Constitution and the rule of law — and validating fears of the founders, who dreaded that a president might one day try to be a king.
Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, in the Democratic response to Trump’s speech, warned that the president would make every American pay more, was causing chaos and warned that Ronald Reagan was “rolling in his grave” over Trump’s cozying up to Russian President Vladimir Putin.
She has a point.
But years of political fury and division beckon. Because as Trump said: “We’re just getting started.”
