Trump's big, long, State of the Union speech

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. How has America shaped the world? I'm Asma Khaled, host of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. As the United States marks its 250-year anniversary, we've been exploring the surprising and often hidden ways the US has shaped the modern world. And today on the show, we answer your questions about this moment and what to expect in the years to come. From the BBC, it's the United States at 2.50. Listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

0:57voters. They really ought to be very happy with what he's done for them. Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we're just always losing, but now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again, you're going to win big, you're going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud.

1:39The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in. Okay, the speech is just over and we are assembling and I promise we'll get to the hockey players later on, but not before we break down the rest of the speech, what it tells us about where Donald Trump wants to take the United States now. Welcome to AmeriCast.

2:03AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. Nicolas Maduro, he after round and he found out. This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

2:29Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. Hello, it's Sarah in the BBC's Bureau in Washington. And it's Anthony. I am at the Capitol just off of the floor of the House of Representatives where Donald Trump finished speaking, what, about 20 minutes ago. Yeah, fantastic. We are all gathered at just 20 past four in the morning in London. And obviously it's late evening for you. And you have, both of you, in your own ways, seen what Donald Trump has said. I suppose we should start with why it matters, because I think a lot of these set piece events in the modern era, people say, oh, it's just going to be clips.

3:04Nobody actually watches the thing itself. I mean, number one, Anthony, you were there. Does it have the electricity that the previous states of the union used to have? I mean, there's still electricity, there's pageantry, there's the announcement as the president comes in and everyone from his party stands up and cheers. And we'll say the Republicans cheered a lot. They were very vocal. They were very animated. They wanted to will Donald Trump's support up. Democrats, the ones who did show up, and there were some notable absences, but they sat icily. They were quiet. There was a real tension in the room throughout the speech.

3:43And there were moments where a few of the Democrats actually kind of shouted back at Donald Trump. So, yeah, there was there was pageantry, there was animation, but there was also a certain amount of partisan tension. It is, I think, one of the biggest audiences for a political event like this that you get in the whole of the political year, I think, isn't it, Anthony? Actually, millions of Americans do tune in to watch this happening, although many of them only listen to the first 30 minutes. And with that in mind, I was kind of carefully having a look at what turned up in the first half hour, because not everybody's got almost two hours to sacrifice to this.

4:19And he hit all of the main points that he would want to deliver in some kind of campaign speech or something. They were all there in the first half hour, him saying that he had transitioned the country from the disastrous state he claims it was in when he took over from Joe Biden to now the hottest country in the world. his boasts about the economy, about cutting taxes, about reducing prices, and about having closed the border. And no, he said zero illegal immigrants had entered the United States during the last year. All of that was pretty crisply delivered in the first half hour. So if people started switching over their television sets at that point, they will have got what he wanted them to hear from it.

5:01Yeah, a State of the Union's audience tends to run in the tens of millions, even 30 million, I think, is recently about what it hit. So there's a big audience for it. And yes, Donald Trump made his sales pitch. He talked about all of his accomplishments. And maybe that's familiar for us who listen to Donald Trump all the time. It's certainly similar to what Donald Trump said in his speech to the nation from the White House just last month. But I don't know whether Americans who are who are not happy with the direction of the country will be convinced by another recitation of facts and talking about how great things are going.

5:38Well, and on that, let's drill down into some of the things he said, because specifically on the economy, we've said this before, but just really struck me listening to it, Sarah, all the stuff about the economy. And there are some prices that have genuinely come down rather than just going up a little less than they used to go up. But for most Americans, when you look at the polling, it is plain that they still think the cost of living, affordability, as it's called in America, is too high and that inflation is too high in things that matter to them. And it just struck me when you listen to him telling them how wonderful the economy was, etc., etc.

6:21It was the echo of Joe Biden who did exactly the same thing and it didn't work for him. But in 12 months, my administration has driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years. And in the last three months of 2025, it was down to 1.7 percent. Gasoline, which reached a peak of over six dollars a gallon in some states under my predecessor. It was quite honestly a disaster is now below two dollars and 30 cents a gallon in most states. and in some places$1.99 a gallon. And when I visited... Exactly. Joe Biden tried to tell people that actually they were much better off than they felt, that the economy was going a lot better than they had experienced.

7:06And of course, they weren't listening to him because they know what they think the economy is doing when they go to the grocery store, when they fill up their car with petrol. And when they do any of these things, they have a very accurate read on what the economy is doing for them. So there is a limit to how often Donald Trump can say inflation has plummeted, prices are coming down, wages are going up, all of which were not entirely accurate. He was exaggerating a bit when it came to these things. But there's no point in telling people that they ought to feel better off if they don't feel better off.

7:39Later, though, and I thought this was cleverer, he did come to some ways in which working people on lower incomes are going to be helped by policies that are coming in. like stopping Wall Street investment firms from buying up single-family homes to turn them into rentals in order to try and make housing affordable for people who wanted to buy their first homes. To ban large Wall Street investment firms from buying up into thousands single-family homes. And highlighting, even with a guest that he had in there with him, how cutting the tax on tips, cutting the tax on overtime, increasing child tax credits mean that some working class families, like the mum who was there in the chamber with him, are saving up to$5 ,000 a year.

8:26So he had some specific ways in which his government are trying to tackle affordability. But as a wider message, just to say to people, look, you've never had it so good, basically, isn't going to work if it doesn't chime with their lived experience. When you talk to Republicans, that's one of the things they say. They say, just wait, just wait till tax time. And all of these tax cuts that they passed last year start to be felt by the American public, and that is going to change their mood, which, well, maybe. We also heard from Biden saying just wait. Prosperity and better polling is just around the corners.

8:59But you touched on a few of the things that Donald Trump proposed today, trying to lower the cost of housing. He also came up with some kind of a retirement plan for people who don't get retirement plans from their employers that they could take part in, although I'm not sure about the legality of that. But those were just sprinklings. They were just little dashes of new ideas dropped here and there. I'm not sure that there's a lot there that Republicans who were in that chamber who are going to have to run for re-election in November can say, OK, this is the platform that we're going to run on.

9:32This is what we're going to sell to the American public that we can do that will make their lives better. And it's more of just convince the voters that things are actually pretty good. Yeah. And on that, Anthony, there are also some things in there, some of the more populist things that Donald Trump, you almost feel him, don't you, being tempted to do that other Republicans don't want to do. And he couldn't get through Congress anyway, which is true, isn't it? Railing against drug companies. I mean, I think there are probably a lot of Democrats and none of them were applauding, but probably felt like, well, you know, we kind of agree with that.

10:06The drug companies are scamming Americans and we have to do something about it. They just think that what Trump is doing isn't really going to matter that much. But, yeah, there are bits and pieces that Donald Trump leans into, which are a little bit different than what a lot of Republicans would be comfortable with. But the big one, I think, was tariffs, which Democrats don't like either. And it was interesting how much the air was sucked out of the chamber when Trump started talking about tariffs. And the Republicans were cheering everything. They weren't cheering that. I thought that was that was noticeable.

10:40He didn't attack the Supreme Court justices who were in front of him, though. For instance, somebody like Amy Comey Barrett, whom he appointed to the court, who voted to strike down his tariffs right there in front of him. The kind of insults or attacks that we might have expected from him were not there. He was very measured and disciplined, I thought, when it came to that, but insisted that, you know, his tariff policies will stay in place. He'll find other ways to bring them in. He said congressional action will not be necessary, which is probably just as well because there are so many of his own Republicans in Congress who wouldn't vote for this.

11:14And he insisted that lots of foreign countries are very, very happy with his tariff regime. But even on that, as controversial as it was, it was a bit more measured than we might have expected from somebody who is probably still furious about what happened to his tariffs. Can I just underline as well, because I think this is such a fascinating point. We used to say there was a coming potential constitutional crisis when the Supreme Court told Donald Trump to do something he didn't want to do and who knows, maybe he might take no notice of it. We used to have episodes, didn't we, where we talked to people, legal scholars, who said, well, the Supreme Court hasn't got any way of actually enforcing what it wants to do if a president says no.

11:58It's interesting, isn't it, Anthony, that on this occasion, the Supreme Court did something that angered him considerably. And we saw that anger and he's gone along with it. There has not been a constitutional crisis. He is doing what they told him to do. And in front of them or a few of them who came to the State of the Union, he was, as Sarah says, meek, meek and mild. Yeah, yeah. He was looking for another means and say, well, we'll just find some other way to do it. He didn't even wag his finger the way Barack Obama did at one point when the court issued a decision against him saying that it was a wrong decision.

12:35I was watching very carefully because I was perched up on a balcony and I was pretty much directly over where the Supreme Court justices were sitting. So I saw them all came in and I heard the murmurs from the crowd when only four of the nine justices showed up. I mean, that's got to be close to a record low turnout for Supreme Court justices at these kind of things. And then I was also watching very carefully when Donald Trump came in. I watched John Roberts, the chief justice, stand up with a very kind of pained expression on his face and clapping very slowly. And they did shake hands and exchange a few words.

13:11But that grimace that Roberts had never really left his face. And I think it's clear that he's not happy with the way Donald Trump responded to that Supreme Court decision on Friday, taken to the press room in the White House and just lashing out against the justices calling them lapdogs and calling them unpatriotic. Sarah, there was a big moment on immigration, wasn't there? Yes. What we heard from Donald Trump was a focus on shutting the border and his claim that zero illegal aliens have entered the United States in the past 12 months, much more than a focus on the deportation campaigns and the very, very controversial way in which ICE have been going about that, particularly in Minneapolis.

13:59He steered away from the more controversial aspects of that. But he then had a stage managed moment to embarrass the Democrats where he asked everybody to stand up. So this is all the Congress members who are there in the chamber with him. He said they were to stand up if they support a country focused on Americans, not illegal aliens. One of the great things about the State of the Union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe. So tonight I'm inviting every legislature to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support.

14:45The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.

14:57And you saw all of the Republicans and their supporters on their feet, applauding wildly, and all the Democrats sat down, some of them looking absolutely furious, like Mark Kelly, some of them shouting at Donald Trump that you've killed Americans, referring to the two people who were shot in Minneapolis by ICE. But it was a moment designed to embarrass Democrats and to allow the Republicans to portray them as being radical leftists who don't support American citizens and have more concern for illegal aliens than they do for American voters. isn't that a shame you should be ashamed of yourself not standing up you should be ashamed of yourself that is why i'm also asking and i think that uh donald trump and the people who created that moment for him will probably be very pleased with how that went it was clearly an attempt by donald trump and the white house to wrest back the immigration issue because as we've discussed on this podcast.

16:00The polls show that Trump's support on the issue has eroded considerably, that it's now a weight on him where just two years ago it was one of the reasons why he won the presidential election and returned to the White House. So this was an attempt by the president to shift focus off this immigration crackdown that has become unpopular and on to all of these undocumented migrants he says are responsible for crime. The Somali pirates who have been doing corruption in Minnesota and the truck driver who seriously wounded the little girl who was in the audience and the undocumented migrants who murdered American citizens.

16:43All of this, definitely a concerted effort to try to move on and regain the high ground, at least in his view, on the issue. But it's interesting, isn't it, that there is this sort of sense It's that they need to change the conversation and change it quite quickly. And I'm not sure for all the discipline, Sarah, that you were talking about, I'm not sure that this necessarily does that. If people don't feel better off and they start blaming Donald Trump for that, because over a year in, you can't carry on just blaming Joe Biden, although Donald Trump did try and spend quite a lot of time doing that.

17:16Then, yeah, it's not going to play very well for them in the midterm elections. There were other things, of course, that he could have done or said that might have made it even worse for them. Not least, a very slight, maybe it's the way to put it, focus on international relations. Because one of the other things that some people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024, but maybe might not come out to vote for him in November this year, be worried about is how much time he seems to have spent on international affairs when they would prefer that he was sorting out their problems at home. But as well as, I mean, he, of course, told us that he had already ended eight wars.

17:52He will never miss an opportunity to claim that. But actually, he wasn't threatening to take action in any serious way in Iran. He said that his preference will always be for diplomacy. And he wasn't talking about expanding American power further than that either. I thought it was quite interesting, actually, how foreign affairs was kept to the end of the speech and kept relatively tight. Yeah, not surprising, I suppose. Most State of the Union addresses, no matter who the president is, unless you're George W. Bush and about to go to war with Iraq, they don't spend a lot of time on foreign policy.

18:28But I think it is interesting, given the massive buildup that we've seen of U.S. forces around Iran and the possibility that there could be a U.S. military action in the coming days. He really didn't try to do any kind of a sales pitch to the country, any kind of an explanation for why this is needed. He talked about nuclear weapons and they won't let Iran have the nuclear weapons. But if the bombs start dropping and if it becomes a prolonged conflict, I think he may regret not doing a little more to at least try to lay the groundwork for for convincing the American public on it. Yeah, I mean, on that and on these other issues as well, I just just to harp on about the midterms, I just didn't feel that there was a kind of rebirth of a Trump politics that tries to persuade the nation that anything is about to change in a way.

19:21I mean, he talked about the economy in the way that we've talked about and tariffs and all the rest of it. But there's nothing there, it seems to me, that changes the subject that gees up Americans and particularly independents, who've been the people who've been going off him recently, according to the polls, that actually changes the political picture. I think you're right. I think that, you know, then again, State of the Union addresses, you know, you're asking, will this move the needle? They generally don't move the needle. There's a lot more attention by those of us who cover politics given to them maybe than they even are worth when you look at addresses like this that actually change the dynamic.

20:02There are very few and far between. I mean, we had, as I mentioned, a George Bush one back in the early 2000s on the run-up to the Iraq War, which was very, very closely watched. The access of evil speech that he gave after the September 11th attacks. maybe one or two of the Bill Clinton won, certainly the one after he had an affair with Monica Lewinsky. That one was was closely watched, although more for prurient interest than I think any other reason. But if Trump is hoping that the White House is hoping that this speech is is what's going to turn the ship around, then then that may be too much of a wish.

20:39I think these things just kind of show up. We spend the time talking about them and then they disappear into the ether. He didn't offer anything spectacularly new that would persuade people to vote for him in the midterms. It was about reframing what's happened in the last 12 months, skating over the more controversial aspects of it that voters haven't liked and tried to package it in a saleable way to say, look, this is what I've delivered for you so far, rather than making big promises about anything that he might be able to deliver for them this side of November. But I do think that the rather more disciplined Donald Trump that we saw there, sticking to the message, not banging on about the stolen election in 2020 or picking out any individual critics or adversaries of his, that this kind of slightly more mature political speech may suggest he realises there is a problem and is about to start addressing it.

21:36Now, whether he can stay on message between now and November is, of course, a much, much bigger question. But it was almost as though the realisation has gotten through to him that the poll numbers are bad and that what's coming in the midterms might not be looking very good because the last few times he's been out to give speeches on the economy and affordability, he hasn't stuck to the message and he's kind of lashed out at his critics instead of accepting that something needs to change or at least people need to be persuaded of what he's done. He mentioned at least one Democrat in really glowing terms and it was fascinating because he also called him a communist, but he obviously really likes Zoran Mamdani, the mayor of New York.

22:15And even the new communist mayor of New York City, I think he's a nice guy, actually. I speak to him a lot. Bad policy, but nice guy. Just said they want people to shovel snow. They got hit hard. Want some to shovel snow. But if you apply for that job, you need to show two original forms of ID and a social security card. I mean, what do you make of the Mamdani mention, but also more widely of how the Democrats approach the whole evening? Yeah, it was in reference to the fact that New York is requiring people to show ID in order to clear snow. And he was making the case that you should have to show ID to vote as well and to pitch his voter ID law that is currently deadlocked in Congress.

23:04But again, you wouldn't mention him, you wouldn't name check him unless you liked him. And the fact that he was bringing up his name, not in a way that was an attack, I do think it's fascinating. We talked about the relationship before, one New Yorker to another, kind of kindred outsider spirits. And maybe that's a sign that that wasn't just a one-off when Mamdani visited the White House, that they do actually have some sort of a strange opposites attract bond. But the Democrats were interesting to watch. I watched them throughout the speech. We had Al Green, who is the Texas Democrat, who stood up and interrupted Trump shouting last year when he addressed Congress, got escorted out by security.

23:49This time he didn't shout, but he stood up and held this banner that said black people are not apes, a reference to that X video that had Barack Obama and Michelle Obama portrayed as guerrillas. He still got X-corded out. Apparently that was disruptive enough. Rashida Tlaib, who is a congresswoman from Michigan, she was shouting back at Trump on a number of occasions, saying that they killed Americans during the immigration enforcement. Ilhan Omar, the congresswoman from Minnesota, who is of Somali descent, shouted back that Trump was a liar when he started talking about Somali pirates who were corrupt in Minnesota.

24:33There was just generally iciness and coldness among the Democrats. And at times it felt like real animosity. And that's the Democrats who actually showed up, as I mentioned. I think upwards of 50 didn't come, which is a remarkably high number. And you could see from the empty seats on the Democratic side and the Republicans who had kind of moved over and taken some of the seats on the Democratic side that they were not at full attendance, not near it. Yeah, and what happens after the State of the Union is that the opposing party nominate one person to give a kind of rebuttal address on TV. And this year it is Abigail Spanberger who's doing that for the Democrats, the newly elected governor of Virginia.

25:18And so she went on TV saying that she had three questions for voters. Is the president working to make your life more affordable? Is he working to keep Americans safe at home and abroad? Is he working for you? And this is some of what she had to say. In his speech tonight, the president did what he always does. He lied, he scapegoated and he distracted and he offered no real solutions to our nation's pressing challenges, so many of which he is actively making worse. He tries to divide us. He tries to enrage us, to pit us against one another, neighbor against neighbor. And sometimes he succeeds.

25:57Right here, guys. At this stage, I've got a day job to go and do so. And I know you're going to talk about hockey too, which, Anthony, hockey is the thing played in a field and you get muddy knees. So I'm going to leave it to the two of you. But enjoy and see you all later. Bye, Justin. Yes, so Justin mentioned the hockey there. And, of course, there are still great celebrations in the United States that the men's American hockey team won gold medal at the Winter Olympics. And we heard in our episode on Monday, Donald Trump on the phone to the victorious players in their locker room when, bizarrely, the head of the FBI, Kash Patel, was celebrating with them in their changing room.