What Trump got right and wrong at the State of the Union address

0:00Gerard Baker: Hello and welcome to The State of It USA, the world's sanest take on US politics. I'm Katy Balls, Washington editor of The Times and Sunday Times, and I'm joined by my colleague Gerard Baker, editor-at-large of The Wall Street Journal, who is in New York. Now, Gerard, last night we had a show for the ages. The US president made history with his State of the Union address. Let's hear some highlights, depending on how you look at it.

0:25Katy Balls: Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States.

0:32Katy Balls: Our nation is back. I've seen nothing yet. We're going to do better and better and better. This is the golden age of America. 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. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. These people are crazy. I'm telling you, they're crazy. You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself.

1:03Gerard Baker: I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen. The future will be bigger, better, brighter, bolder, and more glorious than ever before. Thank you. God bless you. And God bless America.

1:27Gerard Baker: So, Gerry, you've seen a few states of the unions in your time. What were your main takeaways other than the length?

1:33Katy Balls: I had three main takeaways from Trump's performance last night. Two I think he did well on. I think he hit the mark on two of them. The third and most important, I think he failed badly. And this continues to be his problem. The first two, I think. So, first of all, he did a good job, I think, making his case on immigration. It's a strange fact that Trump's actually underwater on immigration. His polls are bad. People are unhappy. They've seen it mainly because obviously these horrible pictures that people have seen from Minneapolis and elsewhere. But the story of immigration, you know, from his own point of view and from his party's point of view, and indeed from most independent voters' point of view a year ago, is a good one.

2:11Katy Balls: He's closed the border. There are no more illegal migrants coming into the country. We know how hard that is all around the world to actually stop illegal migrants coming to the country. No one's coming into the country. And he made that point well last night. And he's deported hundreds of thousands of people who are here illegally. And again, some of that's been ugly, but the overall picture is undoubtedly successful. And he managed to really kind of drive that point home with that probably the most dramatic moment of the night when he basically said, everybody in the room, stand up if you think that protecting American citizens is more important than the rights of illegal immigrants.

2:45Katy Balls: And half the room, i.e. the Democrats didn't stand up. So he got a very – I think he made a very effective point there on a topic that should be favorable to him. The second point is a rather different one, I think, where he did well, which is that he did the job that presidents have to do and he has failed to do markedly throughout his presidency, which is to offer a kind of a unifying message. This is 2026, the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. He did a good job, I thought, of using – sometimes it looks very cynical, but using these war veterans, these heroes, standing up in the room, calling upon them there and then, presenting them with the Congressional Medal of Honor and a Purple Heart and the Presidential Medal of Honor and the Legion of – all of these things.

3:26Katy Balls: And actually, that was quite – Democrats had to stand up for that because these are war heroes. This is America. He was celebrating America. I think he did, again, for him, an unusually good job. The third, though, and the most important, and this is where I think he missed the mark completely, is the economy. People don't feel good about the economy. He gets low marks on the economy. They're still concerned about prices being too high. They blame a lot of it on tariffs, not unreasonably. Tariffs have helped to push prices up. They don't like his policies. They don't like what he's doing. They want to hear some signal that he's changing and that he's listening to them.

3:57Katy Balls: Instead, he keeps hammering home the message, you've never had it so good. The economy's greatest it's ever been. He kept touting the best economic performance of all time, which is not true. He kept touting the fact that the stock market is up at Dow Jones is 50 ,000. Most people don't really care much about that. He's not responding to the concerns that people have that the economy is not working for them. And I, by the way, just as an aside, I thought that Abigail Spanberger, the governor of Virginia, who gave the Democratic response, did a good job of that, actually. That's an impossible job always to do.

4:27Katy Balls: But she did a pretty good job in her response of driving that point home. He's not on your side. He's not speaking to you about your concerned. He keeps celebrating what a great thing the economy is when two thirds of Americans say the economy is on the wrong track. So I think that was the biggest takeaway. And he really failed to land that. And that's going to continue to haunt the Republicans this year.

4:47Gerard Baker: Yes. Just before State of the Union, I and it was my first ever State of the Union, I was on Mark Halperin's show, The Two Way, where often they get US audience members to participate. So it's a two way conversation. And one of the things that kept coming up was the sense that they wanted some honesty on the economy. And they were saying, oh, he's becoming just like Joe Biden. Joe Biden, of course, would talk about how great the economy was doing, but voters didn't really feel it. And the Trump campaign really exploited that. Yet, now you have a slightly similar situation where Trump keeps talking about how all the metrics are going in the right direction.

5:22Gerard Baker: And a few of them made the point that what they would like to see from the president is a sense of we're not quite there yet. We understand, but we're getting there. And I think it was still fairly boosterish, boomerish in what he was saying last night, which speaks to your point, Jerry. I think what was quite interesting, and I completely agree, that moment where he says, you know, stand up on immigration. And I think it was, you know, a classic political trap. And you can start to see how the Republicans are drawing the lines, the battle lines of how they want to fight the midterms, of course, in November, but then also generally their pitch for taking the fight to the Democrats.

5:58Gerard Baker: And you had Chris Lestavitas, who was one of the 2024 co-campaign chiefs for President Trump, alongside Susie Wiles, his now chief of staff. He tweeted after the speech, the adverts write themselves, which I think was another sign that this was political messaging. And I think the view of those around Donald Trump last night was, and of course they would say it was a great success regardless, but I do think there was a feeling that Trump had managed to focus on the political message. When you think about how 2026 began, they wanted a situation where Trump is focusing on domestic ahead of those votes.

6:33But there's been Venezuela,

6:35Gerard Baker: Iran, Greenland threats. Do you think the Democrats handled it well? Because you mentioned Abigail Spanberger, but one of the other big debates was the fact that some Democrats obviously stayed seated, but many weren't even in the room. They chose to boycott the address saying, you know, Trump didn't deserve their presence. They weren't going to sit there and hear the man ramble on for nearly two hours.

6:57Katy Balls: I don't think it mattered. We had the usual ejection of Al Green, which is now becoming an annual event. The Texas congressman who, you know, gets his little bit of 15 seconds of fame by protesting, it was ejected. As you say, a lot of them didn't show up. You know, the AOCs of the world, although interestingly, some very prominent antagonists of Trump, most notably Ilhan Omar, the Minnesota congresswoman, was there and shouted out several times when Trump was speaking. Look, I don't think it matters that much. They're a sideshow. It's the president that matters. I think when people have members of the opposition have kind of, you know, shouted out or protested, there was a very, very famous occasion when Barack Obama was president about 15, 12, 14 years ago.

7:42Katy Balls: Joe Wilson, a Republican congressman, very famous. At one point in Obama's speech, just shouted out, you lie. And it became an absolutely sort of viral moment, but it didn't really change anything. So I tell you what I think, though, I was talking to a Republican over the weekend before, a Republican consultant over the weekend before the speech. I think this point about the economy and Trump's continuing sort of inability to address the concerns that people have and the continuing insistence that this is the greatest economy of all time, thanks to me, Donald Trump. It does go to part of the problem when you have such a powerful figure as Trump, when you have this man who is honestly exercising monarchical authority over the Republican Party and trying to exercise monarchical authority over the country at large.

8:32Katy Balls: and you have this Republican Party that in Congress in particular, and to some extent in the media, adopts this, you know, frankly, deferential, submissive, let's face it, kind of adopts the position with regard to Trump. You're seeing some of the problems with that now because if Trump isn't really getting from people, look, we really need to be out there talking about things that concern people. If instead he's getting, you are the greatest president who ever lived, you are the greatest man who ever lived, which is what he gets all the time from Republicans. Now he gets a slightly different message in private, to be fair, but that's what he gets in public.

9:07Katy Balls: It's not helping. There has to be some recognition by Republicans that this is not working. Trump has got the lowest approval ratings that he's had in his two terms of office. But I thought the reaction to last week's Supreme Court decision striking down Trump's tariffs was really instructive on that. Tariffs are really unpopular and they're unconstitutional. The Supreme Court was in no doubt about that whatsoever. You know, the right thing for them to do is to say, Republicans to do is to say, OK, we tried, didn't work. You know, maybe, you know, it's time to try something else. Instead, they all came out with these, you know, well, you know, the Supreme Court got it wrong and actually let's try something else and all this kind of thing.

9:44Katy Balls: That's the fundamental problem when you have this quasi autocracy or personality cult, which is what the Republican Party has become. you don't have accountability and you don't have dissent and you therefore don't get the party moving onto the track where it should that it should be on instead you get it just persisting

10:04Gerard Baker: with this message that just isn't resonating yeah i woke up this morning and i had various messages from figures in london going oh i caught bits of trump's speech does he just always talk like that u.s politics is mad and i thought maybe i've been in dc too long because for me i thought he was a bit more mellow than normal. But when he was talking about tariffs, there, he seemed restrained compared to Friday. On Friday, when, you know, soon after that briefing, he appeared at the White House press briefing. And he really pushed this idea that he was a wronged man, but also an in control man. And he was going to wreak havoc.

10:41Gerard Baker: And he also singled out a lot of the judges that didn't go his way, saying he'd expect it from the Democrats. But, you know, Republican appointed judges, they'd really let him down. And, you know, it seemed that they'd be targeted. Last night, there sat in the audience, several of them, and he didn't really go there. He talked about being a shame. And but he was fairly restrained compared to what he'd previously said. But I do wonder, on the tariffs, he's clearly having a balancing act where, as you point to, I've spoken to Republicans who hoped that this would just offer him almost an easy way out of the tariffs.

11:12Gerard Baker: And instead, he's saying, I've still got all the levers to pull, no one can stop me, I'm super powerful. And he does have a few things to say. But for example, that 15 % global tariff he's announced, it can only last for 150 days before you need the approval of Congress. And most people do not think that Trump is going to be in charge of Congress in 150 days, you know, with Mike Johnson as the speaker.

11:35Katy Balls: Yeah, look, and again, as I say, the tariffs are hurting the economy, they're unpopular, and they're unconstitutional. It's a no brainer, Really? Move on. But this again, this is when you have this, as I say, sort of quasi autocracy that is the Republican Party. Nobody really wants to do this. You speak to I speak to Republican members of Congress. They hate tariffs. They think they're a disaster. There are a few people in the administration who really notionally, I think, at least believe that they might be OK. But most of them don't. It's a Trump thing. And, you know, he is the president. After all, he gets to do what he wants.

12:06Katy Balls: But when they are so negative for you, it is something that you would think you'd be able to move on from.

12:14Gerard Baker: Probably one of the more eyebrow-raising claims that he made was that tariffs could eventually replace income tax. Do you think that's a goer?

12:23Katy Balls: I can do the numbers for you. US total income tax, income and payroll taxes, I think are about$5 trillion in the US. Last year, tariffs brought in$250 billion, actually, which is quite a lot of money. And again, the inconsistency with tariffs, and sorry to indulge in the economics lesson for a minute, is that tariffs are meant to discourage, obviously, foreign imports and meant to replace, substitute domestic production for foreign imports. But of course, the more you do that, the less you collect in tariffs. So if we have an economy where we no longer rely on imports, significant amount of imports, we won't have any tariff revenue.

12:55Katy Balls: So that's just complete nonsense. But just quickly, Katie, before we take a break, the rest of the speech again we haven't talked about the winning men's ice hockey team who got an appearance what was your impression I actually had a very American experience of the weekend I

13:10Gerard Baker: got up at 7 a.m on Sunday I was in New York not just to escape the snowstorm but to go to an Irish bar and watch the hockey final with lots of American flags and lots of drinks but But I think what's been interesting on a political level of that victory, obviously, historic, you know, I think over two decades since America last won the ice hockey. And the women had won too, but lots of focus on the men. Now, both the men and the women's teams were invited to the White House. We're told the women may come at a later date, but certainly the men's ice hockey team have embraced the support of the Trump administration.

13:49Gerard Baker: But on State of the Union, you could see that what he wanted to do was almost have that star power rub off on him. So this sense of euphoria since that result, trying to lean on that as he talked about a golden age. And then all these hockey players suddenly arrive with their golden medals, stood high in DC last night. I think the main excitement I saw when I was out and about was, does anyone know whether the ice hockey team is having the after party? Will they go to anyone's party? How do we find them? It may be they went to a very VVIP party and I know nothing about it. But there were definitely messages going around saying Trump's State of the Union was so long.

14:26Gerard Baker: They all just went to the hotel room after.

14:27Katy Balls: Katie, I think from what we know of you and your extraordinary social life, that if there's a VIP party you're not aware of, it's a VIP party nobody really needs to go to. So we're going to take a break there anyway. When we come back, we'll look at domestic politics. There's a very important election coming up in Texas this weekend. We're going to be exploring what's going on there. And we should also note, and we will note, that with all the controversies surrounding the former British ambassador to Washington going on, Britain has a new ambassador. He's just presented his credentials here in Washington, and Katie's been spending a little bit of time with him.

15:00Katy Balls: So stay with us.

15:01Gerard Baker: Well, Gerry, back to a subject many times on this podcast of parties. There was a big one on Monday in DC, which was the official welcome drinks for the new ambassador for the UK here in Washington. And this is Dr. Christian Turner, who, of course, has been brought in to replace Peter Mandelson. Now, in a case of not auspicious, but perhaps problematic timing on the day of these drinks, which have, of course, long been in the diary, trying to, as you can imagine, the diplomatic service get a good showing to suggest that, you know, British soft power is there. We had the news that Peter Manderson had been arrested, later released on bail.

15:38Gerard Baker: And this all, of course, relates to the Epstein saga. To be clear, what Peter Manderson is being investigated for is this idea of whether he shared market-sensitive information. And of course, Peter Manderson denies any wrongdoing or that he sought financial gain from these arrangements. but it was not the perfect backdrop for a diplomatic service that is trying to turn the page on what clearly has become a difficult memory for everyone and re-establish good relations with the White House. At this event and at the ambassador's residence we had an interesting mix of guests actually. There are some members of the administration, you also had a few members of the royal household there who are currently over trying to organise or make plans for the king's expected trip in April for the 250th.

16:26Gerard Baker: But the new ambassador gave a speech. He did not mention Epstein, you'll be shocked to hear. He also did not mention Peter Manderson or even make really a joke towards it. Instead, he talked about getting his credentials from President Trump. And he said that President Trump had given him a red cap, as tends to happen to visitors to the White House, you get taken to the stash cupboard. And this red cap said America is back. He joked that he had his own cap, make Wales great again. And then when it came to his message, he was talking about the usual stuff, shared interest, security. But there was also, I think, a little sign that perhaps he's ready to have some more frank exchanges than we have seen previously, saying that he was very keen to defend the fact that London is the freest city in the whole of Europe.

17:15Gerard Baker: Of course, this comes after various members of MAGA, but also Donald Trump have suggested that the UK could be on the route to Sharia law under Sadiq Khan. So I think that as ambassador, Christian Turner is much more a career dip them out than of course, Peter Manderson, who was a political choice. And the question is, how does he navigate MAGA world? Because one of the reasons Peter Manderson was picked, of course, everyone now just says he should never have been picked. But he was picked because he was seen as an operator, someone who could speak to lots of different figures, who could get deals over the line, lots of the thinkers that will come back to haunt him now are also part of the attributes that made certain figures in number 10 push for him.

17:54Gerard Baker: Have you got any advice for the new ambassador?

17:56Katy Balls: Well, I was thinking about Ambassador Turner and thinking what a potential baptism of fire this could be because any day now, as you know, we're going to get the release of these Mandelson files with all of this, you know, presumably trove of communications, emails, messages, whatever else, minutes of meetings or whatever about mandelson and relating to mandelson and his appointment as ambassador and then presumably in his time as ambassador and maybe things will be fine but it's hard to imagine there aren't going to be some revelations of things that are pretty disobliging one would think in terms of the relationship between the british government and the trump administration again we know we know mandelson actually was whatever else he was doing was doing a very good job of kind of handling that relationship.

18:41Katy Balls: But we've seen in the past embarrassing communications about Trump and about the U.S. cause real diplomatic ructions. I was around when, you probably remember, when Kim Darroch was the ambassador in Washington when Trump, in Trump's first term, had said some rather awkward things which caused tremendous embarrassment. We're about to see this avalanche of private communication, much of which presumably will be about US-UK relations in a way. Don't you think, Casey? And again, you've spent some time with Mendelssohn recently. You know a lot about this. I mean, it just could be a very, and that's coming any day now, as I understand it, it could be an incredibly awkward opening drama for the U.A.

19:27Katy Balls: ambassador.

19:28Gerard Baker: I think there are a lot of nervous members of staff in the British Embassy in D.C. right now. not because they've done anything necessarily wrong, but I think most of us would be horrified if all our WhatsApp messages, text messages, signal was suddenly laid bare. And particularly if you think about Peter Manderson's style, he is quite waspish. He is witty. That is one of the reasons he has been this figure who has succeeded in the past of being this big player in the Labour Party. And therefore, you can imagine these exchanges, something that at the time could be read as humour, might not translate when they suddenly come out.

20:06Gerard Baker: And also there could be some frank conversations. And when I've spoken to figures quite close to this, they don't think there's a smoking gun message. Now, let's see, which they think is going to bring down the relationship and suddenly, you know, cause the hugest. But I think that just the number of messages which could have flippant comments within them or just revealed thinking on it could just have this build up to be very embarrassing. and I think you know some will be ducking for cover really when that starts to happen and you can obviously argue fresh face this is a good time for the new ambassador to be here to say we're drawing a line under it but if you think about recent weeks you know the president growing more critical over you know the Chagos Islands taking to true social the fact that the technology partnership has been paused lots of things in that time of not having an ambassador have really been left to drift a bit.

20:58Gerard Baker: And there could be various factors down for that, but there's a lot of work to do in trying to make up that relationship.

21:03Katy Balls: Yeah, we'll see how all that unfolds. And one thing I assume we can take for granted is that Ambassador Dr. Turner is presumably absolutely completely in the clear himself on any communications because that's why I think he's, you know, there's no question he wouldn't have got the job if there were any risk of that. Anyway, but moving on to some important political stuff going on here. We talked about elections, all these elections that Republicans have been losing. We've got a very important primary election coming up in Texas at the weekend. Texas is a Republican state, has consistently been a Republican state.

21:35Katy Balls: Every single year, every single election cycle that I can recall, at least for the last decade, there's been this suggestion that maybe this is the moment when actually the Democrats could win it. Ted Cruz won only narrowly his Senate seat a few years ago. They've tried and come close to winning the governor, not that close, but try and think they're going to come close and they never quite get there. It's like the Peanuts cartoon with Lucy and Charlie Brown on the football that every time they think they're going to get the football, it's taken away from them. They could be about to go through that process again.

22:05Katy Balls: Very important Texas Senate race. Tell us a bit about it, Katie, this primary that's happening, who the candidates are and what implications it could have for the – this is, again, to stress this is the primary election coming up for the general election, which is when the midterms are in November.

22:19Gerard Baker: Yes, it's definitely one of the most intriguing primary races. I think both for the Democrats and the Republicans. It ends early March is when we're expecting the results of it. And the candidates speak to this friction that you often see between what the membership or the base most might like, you know, the ideological purity, and what figures in the party think is the easiest sell to swing voters to the general public. On one side, you have the Democrat race. Now, this is Jasmine Crockett versus James Tallarico. They are seen as the two front runners for the Democratic nomination. Jasmine Crockett, if you've ever watched Fox News, is a source of ire for many Republicans.

23:00Gerard Baker: They love to pick on her. They love to say that she doesn't make any sense, that she's word salad.

23:04Katy Balls: She's black and pretty progressive.

23:06Gerard Baker: Pretty progressive, black, very outspoken. I think on the MAGA scale, she makes AOC look eloquent, they would argue. She is seen as one of the caricatures, I think, of the Democratic Party. And she also is someone who likes the fact, I think, that she embraces the fact that she often will say things that, you know, others won't, that she's not part of the establishment mould. But certainly she's seen as probably one of those characters who can rally the base, has a bit of a cult following, but is more on the extreme end of the Democratic Party. Then you have James Tallarico, who's been slowly emerging, I think.

23:42Gerard Baker: This is a guy who talks a lot about faith as part of his message as a Democrat. and I think is seen as a Democratic politician and be interested in what you think, Jerry, who can reach perhaps more traditional Republican voters. He also last week went viral because he appeared on Colbert on a show that wasn't shown on TV but was shown on YouTube. And this led to this sense that because of licensing rules, he wasn't allowed to be there and therefore it became a cult hit online and boosted his profile to a degree.

24:14Katy Balls: Look, I think to me, though, So this race all comes down to the Republican side, really, and whoever wins the Republican primary. That is a really interesting contest between John Cornyn, who is the incumbent Republican senator, reliably conservative, hasn't been kind of like a big sort of MAGA guy, but has been happy like all of them, almost all of them to just to kind of go along. But he's not identified as a MAGA guy. He's more of a traditional conservative, but he's been the senator there for a long time. And he's being challenged on the Republican side by an openly and aggressively MAGA guy called Ken Paxton who has got all kinds of problems.

24:52Katy Balls: He's had ethics problems. He's had legal problems. His divorced wife is kind of running ads against – he's sort of running a campaign against him. He's a real – one of these MAGA types that have run in elections in the past, in the last 10 years in Senate and governor's races and have typically lost because they are out there. You know, you think Trump – many of our viewers and listeners think Trump is kind of wild. These people are, you know, on another level. And Paxton is very much like that. Now, Paxton – if Paxton were to beat Cornyn, to oust Cornyn in that Republican primary, it's close.

25:28Katy Balls: It's a three-way contest, actually, so it's probably got to go to a runoff to complicate things. But if he were either in the first round or the second round to oust Cornyn, I think then the Democrats have a real chance. Again, they have a better chance with Tallarico than they have with Crockett because Crockett is, for all kinds of reasons you've just discussed, seen as a bit extreme and not really a great candidate. But if it turns out to be Tallarico, this quite charming, quite appealing, quite sensible sort of moderate Democrat, apparently, against this wild-eyed MAGA guy with a trail of stuff behind him, I think there's a chance that – a good chance that the Democrat would finally do the impossible and take Texas.

26:08Katy Balls: I think that's still unlikely. I think probably Cornyn probably will just pull it out in the Republican primary and then he's the incumbent. He'll probably win. But we'll see.

26:15Gerard Baker: And Cornyn's had a lot of money being pulled into his campaign as they're trying to do this. And yet, a lot of the polling does suggest Ken Paxton currently edging it. So it looks like it's on a knife edge. And in the runoff polls, to your point, if it's Ken Paxton versus Crockett, they still think it'd narrowly win. If it's versus Tadarico, it gets much closer. So it's shaping up to be one of the key contests, both in the primary, but then actually for the midterms.

26:40Katy Balls: Yeah, and it's crucial. I mean, the Republicans have a majority. As we know, three seats in the Senate, 53-47. They're probably going to lose one or two seats. So Texas could be crucial in terms of whether or not they hold on to that majority. So it will certainly be worth watching. Just finally, Katie, then, on another political topic, I think you've once again been delving into the subject of California Governor Gavin Newsom.

27:02Gerard Baker: Well, yeah, I've been speed reading, carefully reading, I should say, and devouring Gavin Newsom's new book, Young Man in a Hurry. I hopefully have a book review coming out later this week on it. And this is interesting because I think when a politician writes a book, what are they doing it for? Of course, you often have the post-career memoir. They want to kind of protect their legacy, settle some schools. Then you often have the pre-career. I think the famous one would be J.D. Vance, Barack Obama's books. And Gavin Newsom's, I think, is a little bit too close to when he might actually run for the nomination for the Democratic Party.

27:38Gerard Baker: You know, there's a bit of a joke in democratic circles that he wants to know who's running for 2028. Do they have a podcast and do they have a book coming out? Well, Gavin Newsom launched a podcast last year and now the book is here. And it appears for me that he he's trying to almost take some of the potential issues that he could have if he is to go for the nomination and reset the narrative or neutralize them. So he speaks about an affair he had as the biggest mistake he ever made. He talks about his past marriage to Kimberley Guilfoyle. Who, by the way, just to say, dated Donald Trump Jr.,

28:13Katy Balls: who then got dumped by Donald Trump Jr. and as a consolation prize is now the U.S. ambassador to Greece.

28:18Gerard Baker: Yes, and Kimberley Guilfoyle is married to Gavin Newsom. So obviously she is now seen as Mrs. Maga, which could come back to haunt him a bit with the progressives. So he talks about that marriage and in quite actually dismissive terms, Suggesting that he thought about whether it was a good idea, not before he even walked down the aisle. And then also trying to frame what I think is probably the biggest issue for Gavin Newsom, which is how do you frame California? Because to lots of Americans, they look at California and it's often depicted as out of touch and so forth. But also, you know, high homelessness, issues on crime, issues on affordability.

28:55Gerard Baker: You can see the Republicans going if Gavin Newsom were to get the nomination and polling is quite good for him at the moment. Do you want the whole of the country to look like California? And in the book, he's trying to make the positive case for various things he has done there.

29:09Katy Balls: I don't often do this and shouldn't do this, but I'm going to go on a limb here. I don't think Gavin Newsom has got a prayer. I think he is, exactly as you say, governor of California with a very, very, very progressive record. California is regarded as berserkly, as most Americans sort of tended to think about it. Plays way, way out to the left. He's out there. he's not very impressive ultimately. I mean, and we've seen him this week, you know, he made this sort of awful gaffe in front of an audience of mostly African-Americans in Georgia talking about himself in his book. And, you know, he said, I'm, you know, I'm not really very bright.

29:42Katy Balls: I'm not that smart. I'm just like you. So let's just hear that clip. I'm just trying to impress upon you. I'm like you. I'm no better than you. You know, I'm a 960 SAT guy. You know, they tried to say, well, he was just talking about you in the general sense, My view is Gavin Newsom is not an appealing candidate. He's kind of, again, I think he's sort of Kamala Harris with better hair, to be honest. And I just don't see him winning. And I think the Democrats will recognize that in the primary and he'll go by the wayside fairly quickly. So until next week, thank you for joining us and see you in a week.

30:17Katy Balls: Goodbye.