By Todd Lassa
Consider President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday as a sort of State of the Union-meets-campaign rally moment. We noticed Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), in a pink dress like many of her Democratic colleagues, holding a sign as representatives, senators, Supreme Court justices and administration officials walked into the House chamber that read: “This is Not Normal.”
We did not notice, though USA Today did from the C-Span feed, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-TX) ripping the sign from Stansbury ahead of Trump’s address.
Two minutes into Trump’s address, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) ordered Rep. Al Green (D-TX) removed when Green would not sit down. Clutching his cane, the 77-year-old Green instead shouted out against threatened cuts to Medicaid.
We did notice Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene wearing a red MAGA hat with the words, “Trump Was Right About Everything.”
Throughout the 90+ minute address, longest such speech to a joint session in recent history according to NPR, Democrats held up paddles with words like “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicare.” Several House Democrats left the address early – it was a planned walkout, as they revealed shirts with “Resist” and “No Kings Live Here” printed on their backs.
To contradict MTG’s hat, it must be said that Trump wasn’t right about everything. The president repeated DOGE chief Elon Musk’s exaggerations about programs he had claimed to have uncovered and slashed, such expenditures as $8 million from the Health and Human Services Department for “making mice transgender.”
As often is the case, such hyperbole has some sort of connection to reality. CNN fact-checked this and found the National Institutes of Health in fiscal years 2021-22 spent $477,121 on three projects to understand how feminizing hormone therapy affects the human immune system and susceptibility to HIV, by administering the therapy to monkeys.
Trump repeated the falsehood that the US under President Biden gave $350 billion to Ukraine to fight off Russia, a lie that matches up nicely with the president’s assertion that Ukraine started the war with Russia – which involved the invasion of Ukraine – three years ago.
The president did say he had just received a letter from President Volodymyr Zelenskyy suggesting they revive peace talks between Ukraine and Russia.
With no apparent nod to his statement’s irony, Trump defended his conversations with Russian dictator Vladimir Putin saying, “If you want to end war, you have to talk to both sides.” (NOTE: There is news of a potential summit in the works between Trump, Zelenskyy and UK Prime Minister Kier Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron.)
Trump’s address was largely a list of what he considers the greatest hits of his second term so far, including securing the border, last month’s illegal border crossings, lowest on record, ending government censorship (“and brought back free speech in America”), making English the nation’s official language, renaming the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America and Mount Denali is Mount McKinley, again, ordered that there are only two genders and ended DEI in public and private entities and the military.
“The people elected me to do a job, and I’m doing it,” Trump said. “It has been stated by many … our presidency is the most successful of our nation.”
Key difference between the joint session address and a MAGA campaign rally is that maybe 200 or so Democratic lawmakers watched, all engaged in some manner of protest.
“Nothing I can do to make them happy or stand and applause,” he said. “Nothing I can do.”
Still, Trump called on Democrats to join in the celebration and “make America great again. This, after he explained away his unfulfilled promise of reducing inflation on Day One of his presidency as the result of egg prices and the like inherited from President Biden, the “worst president” in history.
Trump touted his tariffs once more while admitting “there may be a little bit of an adjustment period.”
He said the US will reclaim the Panama Canal.
“We didn’t give it to China, we gave it to Panama” for $1 under by President Carter, he said. “Now we’re taking it back.” Investment firm BlackRock is working a $23 billion deal to reclaim some ports there from Chinese control, though Trump mentioned only Secretary of State Marco Rubio as being “in charge.”
Trump also seemed to cede the fate of Greenland to its inhabitants, saying “If you choose, we welcome you into the United States.
“We really need it for international world security,” Trump continued, but then, more ominously, “and one way or another, we’re going to get it.”
And Trump took credit for creating the Department Of Government Efficiency, DOGE, calling out Elon Musk as its leader. Musk, who reportedly rode to Capitol Hill in The Beast limo with Trump and First Lady Melania, wore a suit.
Musk’s vision for space exploration, obviously with his SpaceX the key NASA contractor, was worked into Trump’s capper on his America First agenda. As the Trump administration pivots away from NATO and Western Europe, the US under this president will conquer new lands and endeavor to “plant the flag on planet Mars and even beyond.”