Unpacking The State Of The Union

0:00Joshua Johnson:Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at hewlett.org. Hi, this is Jen. Just a quick heads up before we start the show. We opened our phone lines for reactions from you about President Donald Trump's State of the Union address. Our live phone lines are now closed, but you can always let us know what you think anytime by leaving a voice message at 855-236-1A1A. Or you can email us at 1A at WAMU.org.

0:44Tuesday night, President Trump delivered his first State of the Union address of his second term. Our nation is back. Bigger, better, richer, and stronger than ever before. It comes at a pivotal moment in Trump's presidency. Approval of his performance and policies have hit new lows among the American people, even on once-winning issues like immigration and the economy. Add to that last week's Supreme Court ruling that overturned the administration's global tariffs, a centerpiece of his agenda, and sudden pressure was on Trump to reset the narrative of his presidency, especially in the face of looming fears that Democrats could take back the House in the midterm elections.

1:21So what did we hear from the president? Did he outline a vision for Republicans to carry into November? We'll also break down the Democratic response presented by Virginia's new Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger. I'm Jen White. You're listening to a special call-in taping of the 1A podcast. We'll be back with more after this short break. Stay with us.

1:44Joshua Johnson:Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation. investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Let's start the conversation with our panel for today. Joining us is Arthur Delaney. He's a senior reporter at HuffPost. Arthur, welcome back. Always great to see you. Great to be here. And Josh Wingrove, he's Washington correspondent and senior White House reporter at Bloomberg News. Nice to have you back, Josh. Thank you for having me. Also with us is Andra Gillespie.

2:18She's director of the James Weldon Johnson Institute and a professor of political science at Emory University. Andre, it's always great to have you. Thanks for having me. And we're hearing from many of you, including from some future voters.

2:31Joshua Johnson:Hello, my name is Sabian Smith. I'm a senior at the Isle, Texas Arlington Grand Prairie High School. When I look at the State of the Union, I see there's distrust like never before. Many political leaders make promises they cannot keep, and many of the laws that are being passed and being called constitutional are barely scraping by the Bill of Rights. This is fueling an atmosphere of distrust and confusion and making the people feel that power does not belong to them. I want progress. With both parties at a standstill, I simply want the parties to come together and agree on how they want to handle important issues like government funding and immigration policy, such as ICE.

3:03Joshua Johnson:Instead of playing the blame game, I want our leaders to see the people, hear the people, and act for the people. Sabian, thanks for that message. We also heard this from Mary, who says, I felt that I saw a different Trump last night. He seemed more controlled than usual. I noticed the same thing in his debate with Biden. He actually stuck to the script and appeared calmer even when putting Democrats down. It left me puzzled about who he really is and wondering if he is capable of such control at other times. So first, Arthur, what did the president set out to do last night and did he achieve it?

3:35Well, there was a lot of pressure on him, like you said, to be different and reset the political situation he's in, which is he's not popular and everyone thinks Republicans are going to get crushed in the midterms, and then he'll wind up getting impeached by a Democratic House. I was surprised that so many people expected him to be different from who he is. We're very familiar with him after 10 or more years, and he gave the same sort of speech that he always gives. In a nod to what the listener said, he did use his subdued voice, but we've heard that before. He did avoid taking the bait when Democrats were heckling him, but he did that at his speech to a joint session of Congress last year as well.

4:20I think the only things that were different were that, like he's done in past big speeches in the House chamber, he had awards to give out to American heroes, our athletes, our military service members. And he rattled off a couple token policy ideas that he said, Congress ought to do this. Congress isn't going to do anything this year. They're done. There's no chance in an election year of a major legislative battle being won by Trump's party. And he made no effort to go bipartisan, even as his administration entered this conciliatory posture and is reeling from their attack on the people of Minnesota.

4:59There's no effort to compromise with Democrats on reforms to ICE and DHS. Well, Andre, we heard from Savian, who will be over 18 by the time the next presidential election comes around, and he said he wants elected leaders to see people, hear the people, and act for the people. How closely does Savian's desire align with the original purpose of the State of the Union? The Union address is a requirement in the Constitution, So the executive branch is required to report to the legislative branch about the job that they're doing. How are they executing the laws that Congress passes? How are they spending the money that Congress has appropriated?

5:43So it has evolved over time in that it doesn't have to be delivered verbally. It can be delivered in a report. And so for a big chunk of our nation's history, it was actually a written speech. um president woodrow wilson revived the spoken state of the union address um in about 1913 um and so we've had um oral addresses every year and they you know of course as technology has evolved they're now televised so uh you know we've seen um the state of the union address uh evolve into sort of you know an oral format where presidents are laying out their policy agenda and they're asking for things and they're taking this as an opportunity to go public, to basically say, here's what I want to do.

6:26Congress do this. And this is a way to put the viewers on notice that if you agree with what the president is doing and Congress doesn't do it, now you can call your member and tell them to support the president's agenda. Well, we got this comment from John in Baltimore who says, please don't make this hour just about vibes and optics and political positioning. Trump made many claims, which if true, would be very persuasive. One trillion in investments under Biden versus$29 trillion in the past year, zero undocumented immigrants, etc. Is any of that even remotely accurate? Millions of voters will believe it unless journalists hold the line.

6:58I mean, let's start with that investments piece of the president's claim, Josh. He talks about$18 trillion all the time. In short, it isn't backed up by the fine print of the deals. If you go, he's talking about investment pledges by companies. I'm moving and South Korea are sort of top of the list. The reality is probably closer to like a few trillion, mid-trillions. It's possible, I suppose, it goes up to 18, but Trump is grossly inflating that number. The reason those pledges are being made, by the way, is in response to tariff pressure. So companies are saying, I'm going to build a factory in America instead of having my products tariffed by it.

7:39A reminder, of course, that tariffs are borne ultimately by American consumers. They're paid by importers, much, in some cases, all of that cost is passed on to consumers. Trump believes that it'll be eaten by exporters. But this is all to say that even if someone is building a factory in your town, on the flip side is that you could be paying more for goods because of the very policy that is driving that. I should also note that in Trump's first year of his second term, total manufacturing jobs in America have declined, not risen. And so he didn't mention that on it. The border thing is true.

8:13Democrats have acknowledged that Trump has substantially clamped down to a trickle, if not zero. Trump himself says he doesn't believe the number is zero, but he claims the number is zero. On that, that's been a big change, and Democrats are left wondering why Biden didn't do more on that during his term. Trump did have tangible things yesterday as well. We can talk about, in particular, he had a 401k announcement that is for low-income workers in particular to help them save for retirement. This appears to be sort of riffing on a law passed under Biden on a bipartisan basis that Trump is sort of looking to co-opt and tweak a little bit.

8:49And it would require congressional approval, and he didn't really outline how we'd pay for that either. It's not clear to me that it would necessarily require it. It's passed. He might try to tweak it on the executive implementation side. The White House hasn't said, so it's not clear to me. we shall see. But he's made sort of similar moves on Trump accounts. The Dell's made big contributions for that. So they're sort of trying to mold that model. That was sort of the one core policy takeaway I took from the hour 47-minute speech. But, yeah, I mean, this is the thing. Trump throws a lot of stuff at the wall.

9:22I sympathize with the viewer who wrote in from Baltimore because it's difficult for the press to be like, well, this is true. Well, not really. In particular with the White House, it is pretty hostile with the press that tried to do that kind of fact-checking. Well, let's take a couple of quick calls. Let's go to Ernie in Philadelphia. Ernie, what did you think about the State of the Union speech? Well, I thought it was very good as far as substantive, but he is definitely not a diplomat by any stretch of the imagination. But the reason why I completely support him is that I feel like even though he is a terrible diplomat, he has been our probably most effective president that I've ever seen in my lifetime.

10:09And I'm 58 years old. As far as morality goes, there's no doubt in my mind that President Carter and probably President Bush, GW, were the most moral presidents I've ever seen. but not effective to, you know, up to Trump's standards. Well, thanks for your call, Ernie. After the break, we'll hear more from our panel and from you. Stay with us.

10:40Let's get back to our special call-in show today. Our live phone lines are now closed, but you can always let us know what you think anytime by leaving a message at 855-236-1A1A. You can also email us at 1A at WAMU.org or use our app, 1A Vox Pop. The president has given his first State of the Union address of his second term. It was an opportunity to lay out his administration's priorities for the next year and make the case to return Republicans to power in both chambers of Congress and this November's midterm elections. Let's go back to our phones. We've got Valerie on the line from Orlando.

11:16Now, Valerie, you have some frustration with the partisan bickering you're seeing. Tell us more. I feel like the State of the Union address is a place, like you said, to talk about what you've done, what you plan on doing, and not to single out things that previous presidents have or haven't done, not to poke fun at the other party, not to disparage the other party. But I had to laugh when the previous caller was talking about that you can't really tell if the president is telling the truth. And to think that we might have to have a truth meter on screen during a presidential State of the Union speech isn't quite so laughable anymore.

12:02Valerie, thanks for that call. I want to note that NPR has an annotated fact check that they did in real time during the speech and somewhat after it as well. You can find that at npr.org. We'll also put a link up on our website, the1a.org. Let's go to Vicki in Pennsylvania. Vicki, you want to know more about what Democrats are planning to do. Talk to us.

12:26Joshua Johnson:Well, the Republicans did not come up with Project 2025 overnight. The Democrats need a plan, a coherent plan to undo the damage, to protect our rights and freedoms. And I want to see that happen. They can tell you all day long, this is wrong, this is wrong, but I want to hear what they're going to do about it. And I just want to say, the guy who said Trump is effective, I love the truth-o-meter from Valerie, but the guy who said Trump is effective, he's awful. He's insane. To say he's effective by starting wars in Democratic-led cities, attacking immigrants, taking their visas, taking their green cards so that he can attack and using little children as bait to get their parents.

13:15Joshua Johnson:That's like saying, well, this person's really effective at getting the parking lot bigger by taking a bulldozer to one side of the school. You know, it's ridiculous. It's not effective. It's awful. Vicki, thanks for that message. Arthur, what did we hear from Virginia's Democratic governor, Abigail Spanberger? She provided the rebuttal to the State of the Union address. I think the centerpiece of Spanberger's rebuttal is that Democrats are the party of affordability and Donald Trump is not. And even though this is an area where many Republicans, I think, hoped the president would try to show that he hears voter concerns about the prices of things and the affordability of American life, He did not.

13:58He, in fact, mocked Democrats for even using the word affordability. He didn't call it a hoax, as he's done before, but that was essentially his message. So Spanberger came out and said, I haven't got the quote in front of me, but she essentially said he's not doing affordability and that is what Democrats will be focused on. Your thoughts, Josh? Yeah, I mean, Democrats are feeling like they're on good footing precisely because of Abigail Spanberger and candidates like that who went to relatively large margins of victory. I should note to the caller saying, well, what are Democrats going to do?

14:35That's a conversation that's ongoing. The party doesn't know where it's going to land. Project 2025 and other elements that Trump did to prepare. Stephen Miller spent basically four years preparing a day one plan. They had the benefit of knowing what candidate they were preparing for. And where he wanted to go, Democrats aren't in there right now. So that is a structural disadvantage. Democrats will not be able to, whenever they take the White House back, whether it's in 2028 or afterwards or in the 2028 election for 2029, they will not be able to hit the ground, the running, the way that Trump was able to, or at least they're not on path to do that right now.

15:09And I should note on this, on like, whether he's effective or not, this is actually a concern that's showing up in polls also for Democrats because people, frankly, sometimes Trump's polls show Democrats perceive Trump as being more, quote-unquote, effective than Republicans do. Republicans want him to do more. This will raise expectations for the next president, whoever they are, Republican or Democrat. They will be under significant pressure to use many of the tools, legally dubious or otherwise, that Trump is using right now. That doesn't mean send ice into cities or anything. But if you think that Trump is sort of going around Congress and trying to do stuff by the flick of a pen right now, he is setting a precedent that the next president will have to at least a bit follow because otherwise it will be perceived by their own voters as inactive.

15:54Right, exactly. Well, we got this message from Dan. When I resume getting out of the grocery store consistently for less than$100 during my weekly grocery shopping, you can talk about a return to an affordable economy. As a single-member household, I've never in the past consistently exceeded$100 a week like I do now. And I shop at Walmart and Harris Teeter, not high-end stores. The economy is still the dominant issue in American politics. Let's hear a bit of the picture President Trump painted of the economy during his speech Tuesday night. The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot.

16:36And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly. Just hold on a little while. We're getting it down. and soon you will see numbers that few people would think were possible to achieve just a short time ago. And we got this question from Mike in Ohio who says, I keep hearing news people talk about affordability, but the president kept talking about the great economy. Are there data points that show us that the economy is not doing well? So, Josh, we heard the president there cite some specific items that he says the price is coming down on them. even if he's correct, does that give us a full picture of where the economy stands?

17:16Overall prices are still rising. They're rising faster than the Fed wants them to, which means it will be slower to lower interest rates, which of course control things like the price of housing. While we're on housing, that changes a lot by region. So you're going to hear a different perspective if you're listening to this from one state versus another. Generally, the economy is doing okay. There is a split economy. It's doing much better for the well-off and less good for the working class. And there are, of course, ongoing questions about what impact Trump's tariffs will have on that. But right now, what we are seeing is moderating price growth.

17:51Things are getting more expensive more slowly rather than falling in prices. This is a problem for every government across the world. And the question is, what are they going to do about that? We heard very little, if anything, from Trump last night about what he wants to do from that. And you could almost hear the cries of Republicans who are almost begging him to talk more about this issue heading into the midterm cycle. And he was only correct that inflation had decreased for three of the six items in that basket of goods he mentioned. And I think this is the biggest problem. You know, people hate inflation more than they hate the threat even of losing their jobs because it's a daily irritation when you fill up your gas tank or go to the store.

18:30But prices will, to our caller, prices do not come down unless something really bad is going on. Your grocery bill is never going to go down below$100. What you want is for your wages to go back up. If you have prices going down, that means there's deflation. That means people are so poor that companies are cutting prices just to entice them into the store. And it's a situation that nobody wants. It's a massive recession or a depression. Under the economy was an issue that led Donald Trump to his victory in 2024. A Gallup poll that was done in the run-up to the election suggests voters thought he would better handle the economy than Vice President Kamala Harris by nearly 10 percentage points.

19:12So how significant are these economic issues for holding onto this coalition of young voters, Latino voters, even some black voters who broke for Trump in larger numbers than expected in 2024? Yeah, I mean, that is part of the margin of difference in 2024. and going into this speech, President Trump's numbers on the economy and on inflation were underwater by a lot. And so I think he was really trying to re-seize the narrative about the economy and trying to reclaim his position as being a sort of leader of the better party with respect to economic issues. I think the question is going to be in the rubs.

19:49He made a whole bunch of claims, not all of which were true. The claims about gas, I'm not saying that there isn't someplace in America that has gas that's under$2 a gallon, but AAA says that that's actually not the norm anywhere in the United States. But one of the things that was actually really interesting was that some of his economic policies seem to be targeted toward working class folks. So the tax cuts on tips, he highlighted that. He highlighted his executive order that was going to ban sort of corporate buying of neighborhoods so that people are priced out of single family homes. He talked about, you know, other things that, you know, he talked about sort of, you know, banning insider trading on Congress because that is a nice populist issue.

20:29It seems like he was basically, one, trying to reclaim the issue, but he was also setting it up in a transactional kind of way. See what I did for you, so you should reward me and my party with votes in the fall. I think the question is, one, does that actually jive with what people are experiencing in their communities, in their day-to-day life, and then what is the impact? So to that caller who said Trump is effective. Trump has done a lot. I think the question is, has he finished? And then it's a question of when he's done. However, to what extent it's done? What is the impact? Do you see that?

21:00And I think when Governor Spanberger sort of brought out the cost of tariffs on individual families, she's saying, OK, even if I accept that prices go down, right, if your tariffs are going up in another dimension, you still aren't coming out ahead. And so that's going to be the challenge that I think Democrats are going to have to have in countering that message. We're speaking to Andra Gillespie of Emory University. Also with us, Josh Wingrove of Bloomberg News and Arthur Delaney of HuffPost. I'm Jen White. You're listening to 1A. Let's go back to the phones. We've got Carl in Washington, D.C.

21:34Carl, you wanted to talk about Democrats' reaction to Trump's speech. Go ahead. yeah so i i see that trump is like the master antagonist so he's going to poke poke the bear and you know the democrats fell into into his trap and it's really sad because somebody's got to be the adult and to me they kind of displayed uh a level of immaturity that shouldn't uh be seen in a public office and that's pretty much all i just say so good luck for the democrats in midterms, but it doesn't look good. Carl, thanks for that call. Now, Josh, you were in the room or you were watching. Arthur, you were in the room.

22:20But Josh, go ahead. You start. Well, I was just going to say, I think the reference there, Trump set a few traps throughout the night where he sort of set binary choices, one of which was the number one job of a president, I'm paraphrasing slightly here, should be to protect the American people and not the illegal immigrants who come here. Now, Democrats kind of view that as a trolly false choice, and so they sat. We're going to see images of that a lot this year in political ads, I think, because Trump thought that that was a big sort of coup for him to be able to get Democrats to sit down for that.

22:48So you had some of these games being played. Democrats did stand with them occasionally. In particular, there were several military citations, including the Medal of Honor, that were awarded. There were two Purple Hearts awarded last night to the two National Guardsmen here in D.C., one of whom was shot fatally, one of whom was there yesterday night and is recovering. So there were moments of unity where Democrats and others did stand. Of course, the U.S. men's hockey team was there. I should note as a Canadian that we remain very upset about the outcome, but congratulations to the American team.

23:20And while I'm on that, let me also note that five members of the U.S. team did decline the president's invitation. About 20 didn't decline, did come. Of those five, four have ties to Minnesota. And so there are questions about whether, you know, why they stayed home as well. Arthur, you were in the room. I mean, take us inside. If you were watching from home, you could hear shouts from the galley from time to time. There were these exchanges coming from the Democratic side of the room. Lots of applause from the Republican side of the room. But, I mean, what were Democrats responding to in those moments?

23:53Well, so first, the Democratic leader in the House, Hakeem Jeffries, said, we don't want to do disruptions. I think just show up and sit in silent defiance. And Democrats were far more orderly at this speech than they were at last year's speech, where there were group disruptions. There were only three lawmakers last night who were really doing stuff. And the first was Al Green of Texas, who was thrown out of last year's speech after he stood up and waved his cane at Trump. And he did something sort of similar. He had a sign that he unfurled as soon as Trump got to the rostrum that said black people are not apes.