Trump had his big event, delivery the first State of the Union address since taking office the second time. While Trump is a different animal, it is still amazing to see how some things never change.
The left was there to protest, and order had to be restored at the beginning of the speech. We didn’t have Nancy Pelosi behind him to tear up the speech, but that is only because the Republicans hold a narrow majority in both houses of Congress.
I can remember watching a few speeches by Clinton when I was a teenager and young adult. He would have his special guests and deliver remarks meant to warm the heart (or break the heart).
It was no different with Trump in 2025. He had many special guests attending, some of whom experienced tragedy and others who offered hope and optimism. There were some heart-wrenching moments, and I am certainly not implying that they weren’t real.
What I am saying is that these speeches are produced like a Hollywood movie and are carefully scripted to tug at your heart strings. It is marketing because people connect with individuals and their emotions. You can rattle off statistics all day long, but a personal story gets a message across. Again, I am not questioning the genuineness of the stories that were told in Trump’s speech, but a few nice personal stories don’t really dictate the state of our union.
The Funny
Trump has a sense of humor. I think it drives the left nuts. He delivered his speech well, and he definitely had his funny moments.
The funniest moment was when Trump was talking about the U.S. sending hundreds of billions of dollars to Ukraine and then went off script. The Democratic Party side was applauding and Trump said, “Do you want to keep it going for another five years?”
A few kept applauding, including Elizabeth Warren. Trump then says, “Pocahontas says yes.”
Mike Johnson and DOGE
As Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson was sitting behind Trump. He would nod his head in agreement and shake his head when Trump was talking about bad things that have happened.
Just remember that Mike Johnson is a snake. Or maybe that is an insult to snakes.
Johnson is an opportunist. He will tow the Trump line for now because Trump is highly popular within the Republican Party. If Johnson gets an opportunity to stab Trump in the back at a later date that would benefit Johnson, he will do it.
When Johnson shakes his head in disgust at Trump reading out all of the wasted money being spent on these ridiculous projects, just remember that Johnson continues to approve funding for all of this nonsense. Why wasn’t Congress looking at all of this before, instead of just blindly passing budgets?
Instead, it takes Elon Musk and a group of young go-getters to do in a few weeks what Congress was never going to do. They actually looked at where the money was being spent.
It was a wise move for Trump to list off some of the egregious expenditures that have been discovered, including funding all of these so-called woke projects overseas.
The Good and Bad Trump
There were no major surprises in the speech. From a libertarian standpoint, we got many good and bad talking points. But none of them were new.
On Greenland, Trump was more measured, saying that it was up to the people to decide whether to join the United States.
On the Panama Canal, Trump was not measured and seems determined to take over the Panama Canal. Is he really going to start a war or use military force over a few billion dollars a year in fees? Either way, it is not moral.
Trump was, of course, mostly good on Ukraine. He continues to say that he wants a ceasefire, and he wants people to stop dying there.
Trump keeps pushing more tax cuts, which is mostly good, but there is still a massive spending problem in Washington DC, even with DOGE.
Trump has said some disturbing things regarding Israel and Gaza, yet he is still better on this issue than we would have seen from Biden or Harris, who would have kept funding Israel with a green light to keep bombing and killing innocent people with no actual efforts at a ceasefire.
Trump’s Downfall?
I fear that the many good things coming out of the second Trump presidency will be undone by Trump’s bad economics. He simply doesn’t understand that tariffs will make things more expensive for U.S. consumers. Any industries that are helped are being helped by limiting competition from businesses overseas that can produce things more efficiently and cost effectively.
For those who say that Trump is just using tariffs as a negotiating tool, they are ignoring reality at this point. Trump wants higher tariffs.
Trump is not wrong when he says the late 1800s were a time of great prosperity. And yes, we had high tariffs then. But we also didn’t have a federal income tax or Federal Reserve, and federal spending was a tiny fraction of what it is now, even when adjusting for inflation.
We are going to see a recession regardless of what Trump does. It is baked into the cake. But these higher tariffs will make things worse. We will get a recession coupled with higher prices.
The tariffs could completely offset any good that DOGE is doing in trying to curtail government spending.
In order for Trump to be effective for the next four years, he needs the American people on his side. He needs the average American who doesn’t pay a lot of attention to politics to appreciate some of the things Trump and Musk are trying to do to reduce government.
The only way this works is if the average American has optimism. They can live through a recession, including a hard recession. But if we are getting higher prices with it, Trump is going to lose a lot of support.
These tariffs are a major threat to our living standards. They will make food more expensive. They will make cars more expensive. In a recession, we should see prices go down, but I fear we won’t get that benefit.
If Trump loses support from middle America because of his high tariffs, then it will threaten everything else he is doing that is good.