Tangle - Trump's address to Congress.

I’m Isaac Saul, and this is Tangle: an independent, nonpartisan, subscriber-supported politics newsletter that summarizes the best arguments from across the political spectrum on the news of the day — then “my take.”

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More Tangle coverage.

Last month, Tangle Managing Editor Ari Weitzman sat down for a conversation on ranked-choice with FairVote CEO Meredith Sumpter. You can listen to the podcast here. 

Quick hits.

1. Mexico, Canada, and China said they will levy tariffs on U.S. goods in response to the Trump administration’s tariffs on their products, which went into effect on Tuesday. (The response)
2. The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 to uphold a federal judge’s order that compelled the Trump administration to release funding for completed projects to contractors and recipients of grants from the U.S. Agency for International Development and the State Department, which amounts to roughly $2 billion. (The ruling)
3. President Donald Trump announced the U.S. — in cooperation with Pakistan — had apprehended one of the key planners of the 2021 bombing at Kabul airport’s Abbey Gate in Afghanistan, which killed 13 U.S. service members and at least 170 Afghan civilians. (The announcement)
4. Russian President Vladimir Putin offered to mediate discussions between the United States and Iran over its nuclear program and support for anti-U.S. militant groups in the Middle East. (The offer) Separately, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said he wanted to “make things right” with the Trump administration and signaled his interest in negotiating an end to the Ukraine–Russia war. (The statement) Additionally, Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe said the U.S. had paused intelligence sharing with Ukraine. (The pause)
5. A consortium led by BlackRock reached a $23 billion deal to place two key Panama Canal ports under American control. The group is purchasing the rights from a Hong Kong-based conglomerate. (The deal)

Today's topic.

Trump’s address to Congress. Tuesday night, President Donald Trump addressed a joint session of Congress for the first time in his second term. Though not technically a State of the Union address, Trump used the platform to tout his administration’s early achievements. Additionally, President Trump outlined his legislative agenda, called attention to stories of Americans who had been victims of crime, and highlighted his administration’s cost-cutting initiatives and executive orders on social issues. The speech lasted about 100 minutes, the longest presidential address to Congress in modern history.

“Our spirit is back. Our pride is back. Our confidence is back,” President Trump said. “The American dream is unstoppable, and our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again.”

Trump also spoke at length about his administration’s foreign policy. On Ukraine, Trump announced that he had received a message from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that Ukraine was ready to negotiate a mineral-rights deal with the United States and make peace with Russia. On the Panama Canal, Trump said that the U.S. would be “taking it back” from China; on Greenland, he said, “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.” Trump also further committed to tariffs, not just on Canada and Mexico, but reciprocal tariffs on Europe, China, and South Korea. 

The speech drew starkly different reactions from Republicans and Democrats. Republicans cheered the president throughout his address, with some of the longest applause breaks coming in response to individual stories.

Conversely, Democrats sat silent throughout most of the speech and occasionally jeered. Shortly after President Trump started his address by boasting about his 2024 electoral victory, Rep. Al Green (D-TX) shouted that President Trump’s victory was “not a mandate” and refused to be seated, leading House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) to order his removal from the chamber. Other Democrats seated in the chamber held signs reading “Save Medicaid” and “Elon steals,” occasionally rebuked claims made by the president, and remained seated during applause breaks. 

“[Our democracy is] at risk when a president decides he can pick and choose what rules he wants to follow, when he ignores court orders or the Constitution itself, or when elected leaders stand idly by and just let it happen,” Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-MI) said in the Democratic response to Trump’s address. “But it’s also at risk when the President pits Americans against each other, when he demonizes those who are different, and tells certain people they shouldn’t be included.”

Below, we’ll get into what the right and left are saying about the speech. Then, my take.

What the right is saying.

• The right praises the address, saying Trump reminded voters why they elected him.
• Some criticize Democrats for their conduct during the speech. 
• Others say Trump’s optimism overpowered Democrats’ antipathy.

In The American Conservative, Daniel McCarthy called it “a night of triumph for Trump.”

“His remarks were long—a solid two hours—but they did not consist of the usual rhetorical fluff and vague promises. Instead, the president reiterated most of the themes and policies he’d outlined in his inaugural address, adding some accomplishments already won and expanding on many items still on his agenda,” McCarthy wrote. “Dismantling the ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’ (DEI) regime, expelling illegal immigrants, fighting gangs and cartels, and affirming that there are only two sexes (or ‘genders,’ if we must) were among the objectives duly enumerated, as were tariffs, tax cuts, and ‘drill, baby, drill.’”

“Trump dispelled controversy from his policies by highlighting individuals whose experiences made the case for them emotionally irrefutable. Here too the Democrats’ antics helped Trump by reinforcing the impression conveyed by the guests’ testimony,” McCarthy said. “This is an administration on full offense, yet only Democrats are offended, to judge by the highly positive public response to the speech. Trump and his team have found a way to turn combativeness into attraction, leaving the president’s unhappy foes nothing to do but shout and pout.”

In The Federalist, Jordan Boyd argued “Democrats protest Trump’s agenda because it forces them to celebrate America’s wins.”

“Trump kicked off his joint address to Congress on Tuesday night by declaring ‘America is back.’ He didn’t get much further in his speech before he was interrupted by a chorus of protests from Democrat members — primarily Rep. Al Green — shouting and waving auction bid-like paddles expressing their dissent,” Boyd wrote. “Trump has already accomplished much of what he promised the Americans who elected him. Yet, he recognizes that Democrats will still vilify him.”

“Their behavior is not the least bit surprising given their track record of trying to steal Trump’s State of the Union spotlight. More importantly and unfortunately for Americans who are hopeful their country can survive the constitutional crisis the previous administration thrust it into, their rebuff of Trump’s invitation to unify over the betterment of the nation is also on brand,” Boyd said. “The only reason Democrats can kick, scream, and refuse to clap for that and even the most wholesome, least partisan parts of Trump’s agenda is simply because they don’t believe in the America Trump and his voters so dearly love.”

In The New York Post, Michael Goodwin said “Trump’s rousing address puts Dems’ bunch of clowns to shame.”

Democrats “earned their trip to the political wilderness and Tuesday proved they are not yet ready to emerge as a constructive opposition party. Meanwhile, the president they love to hate put on a show for the ages. No commander in chief in modern times has seized the reins of power with such gusto and delivered such immediate results,” Goodwin wrote. “We are witnessing a president at the top of his game. Clear-eyed and confident about himself and his agenda, he put on a master class in presidential leadership in what was a speech for the ages.”

“The Trump on that stage is not just the dominant figure in American life. In six short weeks, he has put our nation at the center of the world and made America important again,” Goodwin added. “As for Democrats, there was one moment Tuesday where it seemed to me they especially were embarrassed. Trump recounted how Biden and Senate Dems insisted that new legislation was needed to shut the border. But Trump, in a deadpan fashion noted, ‘It turns out all we needed was a new president.’ Half the room rose in thunderous applause. The other half had no answer.”

What the left is saying.

• The left is critical of the address, saying it was full of showmanship but light on substance. 
• Some say Trump focused on culture war issues at the expense of pressing economic problems. 
• Others question Democrats’ response to the speech. 

In The Washington Post, Karen Tumulty called it “a classic Trump speech, rich in showmanship and at odds with reality.”

“‘America’s momentum is back,’ Trump proclaimed… That was a big claim, considering Trump is less than halfway through his first 100 days and what he has achieved thus far is mostly turmoil and a blizzard of legal challenges. On Tuesday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 670 points, driven downward by Trump’s decision to impose punishing tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China,” Tumulty wrote. “Hard hit by this act of economic and political arson would be the working-class Americans who voted for Trump in part because they believed he would deliver a stronger economy and lower inflation.”

“Amid the partisan tension, Trump punctuated his speech with some heartwarming, Oprah-like flourishes… What got short shrift in the address is the degree to which Trump is dismantling a world order built over three-quarters of a century by the United States itself, through global engagement and multinational alliances,” Tumulty said. “As an exercise in gilded reality, the speech was trademark Trump.”

In The American Prospect, Harold Meyerson said “the state of Donald Trump’s union is permanent culture war.”

“What America is going through today has been termed a ‘cold civil war,’ and Donald Trump certainly validated that perception last night with a 99-minute display of waving the bloody shirt before a joint session of Congress. He almost completely blew off the ‘what needs to be done’ legislative agenda that presidents customarily put before Congress,” Meyerson wrote. “He barely touched on the economic concerns that led to his victory last November… His most specific discussion of the economy was to warn farmers that the retaliatory tariffs imposed by trading partners earlier in the day might harm them, but, he hoped, only temporarily.”

“Trump pronounced: ‘Woke is gone.’ Well, not if he has anything to say about it. If his speech demonstrated anything, it’s that he’s determined to keep woke in all its variations—suspicions of woke, things that might be woke, things that can be attacked as woke—very much alive,” Meyerson said. “Trump had virtually nothing to say last night [to non-supporters], nothing on offer, save that the tariffs might discomfort them for a while. His speech was exceptional not only for its length, but for its backward-looking nature. Biden popped up more than once as the cause of all the current economic woes.”

In The Atlantic, Tom Nichols wrote “Democrats are acting too normal.”

“Pity Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who got handed the task of a response to Donald Trump’s two-hour carnival of lies and stunts. Slotkin gave a good, normal speech in which she laid out some of her party’s issues with Trump on the economy and national security. It was so normal, in fact, that it was exactly the wrong speech to give,” Nichols said. “Slotkin—like so many in her party lately—failed to convey any sense of real urgency or alarm. Her speech could have been given in Trump’s first term, perhaps in 2017 or 2018, but we are no longer in that moment.”

“Did Americans vote for Kash Patel to lead the FBI, or Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run the Department of Health and Human Services, or Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense? Trump took time to recognize and praise all three of those men in his speech. So why not ask that question,” Nichols wrote. “Slotkin’s response reflected the fractured approach of the Democrats to Trump in general. Some of them refused to attend tonight’s address, some of them held up little Ping-Pong paddles with messages on them (a silly idea that looked even worse in its execution), and others meandered out.”

My take.

Reminder: "My take" is a section where I give myself space to share my own personal opinion. If you have feedback, criticism or compliments, don't unsubscribe. Write in by replying to this email, or leave a comment.

Today is one of those days where there’s so much to cover that a normal “My take” won’t suffice. Instead, here’s 17 thoughts from last night: 

1. I can’t think of any president who has rivaled Trump’s showmanship. Obama and Clinton had a similar capacity for delivering big speeches like this, but I don’t think either of them were as good at working the room. Trump egging Democrats on to smile or cheer for any of his accomplishments, or swearing in a 13-year-old brain cancer survivor to the Secret Service, or presenting a new executive order live, or even announcing the acceptance of an applicant to West Point — it’s all eyecatching, distinctly Trumpian, and impossible to imagine from President Biden. I think it’s a big reason why Trump is back in office; in fact, it might be the reason.
2. If you are an American who has only paid passing attention to the last six weeks and watched Trump’s speech, you’d probably think things were going exceptionally well. It did not surprise me that 76% of speech-watchers approved of the address, according to CBS.
3. Trump talked about immigration several times, and man, did he earn the bragging rights. Illegal border crossings hit a 25-year low in February, his first full month in office, and they could be the lowest ever. He proved a lot of people wrong (including me) that he could get numbers at the southern border back down this low without the help of Congress. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation, we must have legislation to secure the border,” Trump said. “But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
4. I am not a particularly sensitive person when it comes to fearmongering in politics, but framing transgender women as evil — an overt focus on a small sliver of our population — really makes me uncomfortable. I know Trump claims to care about women’s sports, and some stories about early transitions for minors who later regret it obviously present real harms, but really I think he’s just found a winning issue that activates people’s worst instincts (fear and hate) and is continuing to exploit it. Imagining the trans women I know watching that speech makes me feel deeply sympathetic for them, and I imagine they feel a ton of fear just going through their day-to-day lives right now. I wish he would just stop.
5. One deeply concerning note from the night: We appear to have a bunch of petulant children running the country. One member of Congress ripped a sign out of another member of Congress’s hands. The president called Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) “Pocahontas” as to mock her purported Native American heritage. One side was jeering and interrupting the president while the other side tried to drown them out with chants of “USA.” I mean, this is genuinely the stuff of an 8th-grade pep rally. Is anyone else at all concerned about this?
6. Could Democrats be any worse at this? They seem utterly outmatched and out to sea right now. Holding up signs that say “false,” wearing pink blazers, walking out, getting kicked out — it all just looks so feckless. Is this really their plan for “the resistance?” Do you think maybe you should stand up and clap when Trump announces the capture of a terrorist who killed 13 Americans at Abbey Gate? Or how about for the family of Laken Riley? At least a few of them put their hands together for the 13-year-old with brain cancer. 
7. One of the most cringey things about the MAGA movement is their obsession with superlatives, which clearly comes from their leader. I saw a few prominent social media accounts suggesting that last night’s congressional address was the greatest ever, or Trump’s best speech ever (it was neither). Trump himself couldn’t help but claim Biden was the "worst president in American history.” Seriously, everything doesn’t have to be the absolute greatest and worst thing in world history — could we try a new way to communicate? 
8. Trump is still repeating a lot of nonsense about Social Security payments to 150-year-old Americans. To recap: We know the Social Security Administration (SSA) issues erroneous payments. Last year the SSA inspector general found $71.8 billion in improper payments from 2015 to 2022 (about 0.84% of the $8.6 trillion in payments over that time). Another inspector general report from 2021 found that the SSA made $298 million in payments to 24,000 dead beneficiaries. But Musk has made much more sweeping claims on X and is pretending DOGE uncovered this. A lot of people explained to Musk that he was misunderstanding the data he was looking at, but he has not corrected the record. Now the president is running with it, even after his own appointed Social Security administrator said “recent reporting” (from Musk and Trump) was misinforming people about fraudulent payments. 
9. Relatedly, I think Pete Buttigieg asked the right question: “What is this a pretext for? He and the GOP have long shown interest in going after Social Security. What are they going to try?” It is very obvious that Trump and Musk keep implying fraudulent Social Security payments are going to unrealistically old people — after this has been debunked repeatedly — which suggests he’s providing himself a pretext to eliminate or reduce Social Security payments. This is obviously a political third rail, and I’m still unsure if Republicans go for it, but I really can’t think of any other reason for Trump to keep pushing Musk’s story.
10. Maybe Trump’s strongest moment of the night was listing all the different programs our federal government spends millions or billions of dollars on. As we’ve covered repeatedly, I would not take any DOGE numbers or statistics at face value — they keep making errors and trying to cover up their mistakes. That being said, I took a quick glance through Trump’s list last night, and while I can’t find evidence for a few claims and others seem inaccurate, most of them looked true: We do spend close to $20 million on what looks like an Arabic version of Sesame Street, or  $45 million for DEI scholarships in Burma, or $47 million to improve learning outcomes in Asia. I think there is a strong case for continuing most foreign aid programs, but a lot of Americans are going to hear this stuff and want big changes. It’s smart politics. 
11. Trump did not inherit an economic catastrophe, as he claimed. He got a relatively stable and growing economy with low unemployment numbers that has overcome the worst of pandemic-era inflation (but is still trying to fully bury it). That being said, his tariffs are creating a lot of uncertainty and unease on Wall Street, and I think a recession is increasingly likely. I know this is a radical idea, but I think Trump may want a recession, and I think he and his supporters are going to try to sell the idea that a recession would be good for the country (I’ve actually been keeping a running thread on X of this very thing). 
12. I have no idea how Democrats haven’t hopped on this talking point, but Trump continues to demand the end of remote work for federal workers while spending an awful lot of time at his home in Mar-a-Lago. This talking point is an easy alley oop; I mean, he’s claiming remote workers are probably golfing and then he goes to Mar-a-Lago and golfs on a Tuesday. When I say Democrats’ messaging seems out to sea, not even trying to go up and dunk these easy lobs from the president is exactly what I mean.
13. There was an assortment of nonsense: Trump claimed we’re going to balance the budget, but he just pushed the House to pass a bill that will add literal trillions to the debt and deficit. He claimed “free speech is back,” but he’s banning newsrooms from the White House for not using “Gulf of America” and just pushed a crackdown on protests at college campuses. Speaker Johnson reprimanded Rep. Al Green for not respecting decorum in the House, but he said nothing when Reps. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) and Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) were incredibly disrespectful during Biden’s State of the Union addresses. Trump again publicly said Musk is leading DOGE, but the administration claims in court that Musk doesn’t even work there. Trump took credit for a $165 million investment from the Taiwanese chipmaker TSMC, an investment made possible by the CHIPS Act passed on a bipartisan basis under Biden, but trashed the bill just minutes later.  
14. Also, for the record: Trump promised to pass no tax on tips, no tax on overtime, and no tax on Social Security benefits. Just last week, some Republican members of Congress were claiming they already passed those policies in the budget bill, which was a lie, but it was funny to see Trump promise these things were coming after members of his party bragged they had already happened.
15. It’s getting lost in all the noise, but Trump is proposing a “gold card” for immigration — at the same time he’s challenging birthright citizenship, he wants to sell U.S. citizenship for $5 million a pop. Trump thinks he can sell 10 million gold cards, which would create $50 trillion in revenue (that’s not happening). I can’t tell if this is a brilliant or stupid idea. He basically wants to take an existing program and just multiply its cost by five, but he seems genuinely attached to it and I think he’s really going to try it. Interestingly, the plan has drawn some fire from Ryan Girdusky, arguably one of his most ardent populist supporters. 
16. My personal favorite moment of the night was the Marc Fogel moment. I had no idea Trump had met his mom in Butler, Pennsylvania, the day Trump was almost assassinated. What a remarkable story, and it’s incredible that Trump got him home in a matter of weeks after he spent almost the entire Biden administration trapped in Russia.
17. I also thought Trump’s final flourish was the best speechwriting from this administration so far. I am a sucker for the pitch that America is a country of doers, dreamers and survivors, and that we should always tell our story as a proud, free, sovereign nation loudly and with our chest. We do stand on the shoulders of the pioneers Trump listed, and this is really him at his best. I wish he’d just do a lot more of that. 

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Under the radar.

On Thursday, Thailand deported 40 Uyghur asylum seekers to China, an effort Thai officials said they carried out at the request of the Chinese government. The deportees fled China in 2014 in an attempt to escape oppression by the Chinese government, which has detained as many as one million Uyghurs in internment camps and prisons. After holding the asylum seekers in Bangkok for more than a decade, Thailand’s decision to send them back now signals China’s growing influence in the region. U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio condemned the decision, saying Thailand could be violating “its international obligations under the U.N. Convention Against Torture and the International Convention on the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance.” The New York Times has the story.

Numbers.

• 1 hour, 39 minutes, 32 seconds. The length of President Donald Trump’s speech on Wednesday, the longest presidential address to Congress since 1964, according to The American Presidency Project.
• 1 hour, 28 minutes, 49 seconds. The length of President Bill Clinton’s State of the Union address in 2000, the previous record holder for the longest presidential address to Congress.
• 1 hour, 20 minutes, 20 seconds. The average length of President Trump’s State of the Union addresses in his first term. 
• 76% and 23%. The percentage of people who watched Trump’s address who respectively approved and disapproved of the speech, according to a CBS News/YouGov poll.
• 63%. The percentage of speech watchers who said Trump spent “a lot” of time on the issues they care about. 
• 51%, 27%, and 20%. The percentage of speech watchers who respectively identified as Republican, independent and Democrat, in the CBS News/YouGov poll. 
• 18. The number of times Trump mentioned tariffs during the speech. 
• 13. The number of times Trump mentioned former President Joe Biden during the speech.
• 11. The number of times Trump mentioned Ukraine or Ukrainians during the speech. 
• 7. The number of times Trump mentioned inflation during the speech. 

The extras.

• One year ago today we covered Trump being reinstated on the Colorado ballot.
• The most clicked link in yesterday’s newsletter was the ad in the free newsletter for a deal for Tangle readers for 86% off Surfshark VPN.
• Nothing to do with politics: Yesterday, LeBron James scored his 50,000th career point in the NBA.
• Yesterday’s survey: 3,314 readers answered our survey on a federal cryptocurrency reserve with 92% opposing the idea and the coins chosen. “Any opportunity to expand corruption and graft is a bad idea,” one respondent said.

Have a nice day.

Garbage pollution can lead to the disruption of aquatic ecosystems and wildlife. Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage (OLAUG), a group of women aged 64 and older, is determined to preserve Massachusetts ponds and protect these ecosystems. Since 2018, the group has been diving into local ponds to extract underwater garbage — once even pulling a toilet out. “I realized that it wasn’t about the garbage, it’s about that we have discovered a way of repairing the planet…based on joy,” founder Susan Baur said. Nice News has the story (and photos).

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