Iran Is Merely a Chess Piece in a Much Bigger Game

 

Let’s get real about what this latest iteration of the until-now endless Iran War is all about. There’s no imminent threat. That assertion is a pacifier to the weak-kneed and timid. Last June, we set the mullahs back years in their quest for nukes. They have a metric butt-load of ballistic missiles, rockets, and drones, but they weren’t going to fire them off unless we attacked them. After seeing Sulemani turned into sushi, and their nuclear weapons program neutered like a Bulwark job applicant in one fell swoop, they weren’t about to restart throwing fists as long as Donald Trump was in the White House. Note that the word is “restart,” not “start,” as the cynical liars and historical illiterates insist. We didn’t start this war. The pagan freaks started it 47 years ago when they took our people hostage, and continued it when they killed our Marines in Beirut, our embassy workers, our Air Force folks at Khobar Towers, our troops in Iraq, and so on and so on. They started this war; we’re merely finishing it.

But why are we finishing it now?

It’s simple. Donald Trump is resetting the entire global gameboard. He’s playing 4-D chess, with the Fourth Dimension being time. This is the long game, and we finally have a president playing to win.

And it’s not all Iran. Iran is merely one piece of a much bigger whole. Understand how momentous this undertaking is. President Trump is changing the world as we have known it for the last 50 years – scratch that. Make that the last 80 years. When he is finished – which comes after many of our major foes have been finished – the world will look very different, and we will be back on top as the undisputed unipower in a unipolar world. When this is done, Donald Trump will be the most consequential president since Ronald Reagan; it’s something to be tied with the Gipper, who reset the board by defeating the Soviet Union without a shot (at least, without an acknowledged shot between Americans and Russians). From what’s happening in Europe to what’s happening in the Middle East, and elsewhere, Donald Trump is changing the game. He is no longer kicking the can down the road. He’s going to kick the tails of our enemies (and, figuratively, our allies)by changing how the United States does business.

How has the United States done business for nearly a century? It has restrained itself and allowed itself to be restrained by others. Until now, it has never fully flexed its muscles. After World War II, the United States was a megapower. Yes, the Soviets had nuclear weapons, and that put them sort of on par with us, but they never had the strategic reach that the United States had. The Soviets could never move a half-million Americans and their heavy combat equipment to the other side of the world, then move it all into another country and wipe out its entire army (the fourth largest in the world) in 100 hours. I was part of that during Desert Storm. Nor did the commies have the economic power we had. As a reserve currency with an economy that dwarfed everyone else, we were it, the man, A-number one.

But we never used our power to its full extent. We were restrained. Part of it was voluntary. Our morally misguided ruling elite believed that, at some level, America was unworthy of its power and not trustworthy to wield it. They counseled restraint, and so we restrained ourselves. We allowed the Vietnamese communists to drag a war on for decades that we could have won in a year. We didn’t bomb Hanoi or mine its harbors (where the Soviet arms came in) until Christmas 1972. And when we did, we had a peace treaty by March 1973.

Of course, our trash foreign policy establishment and cultural left screamed about that. How dare Nixon do the thing that would win the war? After they got rid of Tricky Dick in the first iteration of Russiagate, they betrayed our South Vietnamese allies and let the North win – as our elite felt it should.

In Europe, we agreed to pick up the tab for defending Europe to get our allies back on their feet after WWII. That continued until Trump drew the line. The allies chose degeneracy, weakness, and to spend the money they saved, thanks to Uncle Sucker picking up the tab, on welfare and Third World invaders. Similarly, we never used our economic power. We gave trade deals that screwed our own producers to our allies – and others – to grow their economies. And we allowed ourselves to be restrained by international law, a mythical construction pushed by European globalists who were less interested in right and wrong than in making their lilliputian move by tying down the United States of Gulliver with rules and norms that bound only us.

Trump is not playing any of that. While the convoluted explanations and fake moralizing that attempt to justify hobbling the United States and preventing it from exercising its full power in the defense of its interest may appeal to the elite, normal Americans – of whom Trump is an avatar – don’t buy it, especially nearly a century after World War II ended when we nuked Japan (have you noticed how mad they get that we used that power to save hundreds of thousands of American lives?).

We took out Venezuela because it has been an enemy for a couple of decades and a thorn in our side, cooperating with our other enemies. We will soon take out Cuba for the same reason. No, they did not launch an overt attack at us lately for the same reason Iran didn’t. They are weak, and we are strong. So, what better time to attack? The usual suspects are making hilarious arguments that it’s wrong for us to attack weaker countries, as if this were some playground where we’re trying to steal their lunch money. Only an idiot fights fair; hitting them while they are weak, before they fix their defense systems, replenish their missile stocks, and build a hot rock is the best time to hit them.

It's another made-up “norm” that no one ever voted on that exists solely to restrain the United States from leveraging its power to promote its interests. When Iran goes, that deprives Russia of a key arms partner and lets us get our hands around China’s throat because the CCP’s oil comes largely through Iran. If you want peace, support regime change in Iran so we can control the fossil fuel spigot. China can’t invade Taiwan as long as we can turn off the gas.

Imagine the world that Donald Trump and his team imagine. The Europeans will start paying their own checks; maybe getting their allowance cut off will encourage them to get serious about preserving their culture. Even if they don’t, the fact that Trump did not even bother inviting them into the Iran fight shows they are totally irrelevant as far as actual power goes. We will have the Americas free of communist subversion for the first time since JFK shamefully wussed out at the Bay of Pigs, which additionally helps us domestically on drugs and immigration, while providing new markets for what we manufacture. In the Middle East, the regime that is the main force for destabilization in the region will be replaced by people who do not chant “Death to America!” and we can finally end the ‘forever wars” we hear so much tiresome whining about. We will never face a coterie of seventh-century savages with The Bomb atop a ballistic missile that can reach Kansas City – could you imagine that, because it was in the cards if the “adults in the room” had their way?. And Russia and China will have the military option taken off the table – no oil, no war. Then, when the delusion of conquest has dissipated, we can build a peaceful relationship.

Trump loves peace. That’s why he has gone to war. But more than that, he has totally rejected the perpetual cycle of failure and defeat that allows our enemies to persist for decades when we could have brushed them off our shoulders like dandruff. If you want peace, support Donald Trump and this war. If you want war, support the pinkos, traitors, half-wit podcast bros, and libertarians who support “peace.”

Trump's Way of War

 

War is the use of arms to settle differences – tribal, political, religious, cultural, and material – between organized groups. It is unchanging. The general laws of armed conflict stays immutable, given the constancy of human nature.

However, the manner in which war is conducted remains fluid. New weapons, tactics, and strategies elicit counterresponses in an endless cycle of tensions between defensive and offensive superiority.

That said, has President Donald Trump introduced a novel way of waging Western war against America's foreign enemies?

We saw glimpses of it during his first term, when he eliminated Iranian general and terrorist kingpin Qassem Soleimani and ISIS terrorist grandee Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. In the former case, he preferred hitting the cause rather than the effects of Iranian terrorism in Syria and Iraq, while making it clear that he had no intention of striking the Iranian mainland and entering into a tit-for-tat "forever war."

In large part, he was successful. Iran never quite replaced the venomous Soleimani. And despite tired threats, its performative art responses did not kill any Americans, and they were seen by Trump as venting and not worth a counterresponse.

In the case of the killing of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, Trump likewise went after the catalyst of ISIS terrorism. But he also bombed ISIS into near nonexistence in Iraq, since, unlike Iran, it lacked the financial and material resources of a state sponsor of terror, and it had no independent ability to make weapons or finance its terrorism.

In 2018, Trump probably killed more Russian ground troops (more than 200?) than America had during the entire Cold War, with his furious response to the Wagner Group assault on a U.S. Special Operations base near Khasham, Syria. Yet the defeat of Russian mercenaries also led to no wider conflict.

In these three cases, Trump successfully portrayed his antagonists as the unprovoked aggressors, employed overwhelming force to eliminate them, and declared them one-off occurrences with no need to punish the ultimate source or sponsor of the aggression with further force, and he was largely successful in limiting subsequent attacks on American installations.

In Trump's second term, he widened his doctrine of "preventative deterrence" with operations to remove Venezuelan communist strongman Nicolás Maduro, along with two separate bombing campaigns against Iran.

While the second Iran operation is now in progress, it may resemble the earlier two in a number of facets.

Trump again portrayed Venezuela and Iran as unpunished past and present psychopathic aggressors. He went after Maduro, whom Biden had largely ignored, for his past of exporting gang-bangers and criminals across the Biden-era open border and for using Venezuela's cartel connections to profit from American deaths.

As for attacking Iran, Trump cited the theocracy's past terrorist attacks on Americans and U.S. allies, its effort to assassinate Westerners, and its unwillingness to abandon plans to create a nuclear weapon.

What, then, are Trump's new ways of conducting war?

1. Geostrategy

Always behind these seemingly unconnected events – and other nonkinetic moves like warning Panama about Chinese intrusions – strategic concerns loom. The common denominator is usually isolating China from strategic spaces, allies, and oil – and Russia in a lesser sense.

Loud and terrorist, but ultimately impotent, proxies of strategic enemies – Cuba, Iran, Venezuela – are preferable targets. They are not just easily identified enemies given their past anti-American violence; they are also targeted because their demise offers a global display of the weakness of their distant patrons and underwriters.

2. Wars of reckoning

Trump always frames his interventionism as reactive and long overdue. It is a sort of "reckoning war" for previously overlooked crimes that his predecessors had ignored but are often seared in the American mind. "Preemptive" or "preventative" wars, these strikes may be. But Trump himself avoids the baggage that those adjectives of aggression convey in the collective American memory.

3. War among negotiations

Trump's way of warmaking is usually an extension of ongoing negotiations (e.g., over Iran's nuclear weapons or Maduro's subsidies to terrorists and drug trafficking). So, during discussions, he offers various exit ramps to his adversaries and publicly laments the possibility of violence.

Meanwhile, American naval and expeditionary assets show up and amass to ramp up the pressure. Trump does not wait for negotiations to fail, but usually offers a deadline to his adversaries. And then he simply informs his advisors of the point at which the enemy has no intention of seeking a peaceful settlement. A strike follows.

4. The culpable apparat

Trump prefers top-down war. That is, he starts his attacks by targeting the enemy apparat, not its lesser henchman. The aim is both to disrupt its command and control and to separate an enemy leader from a population deemed not necessarily culpable.

His enemy counterparts – al-Baghdadi, Khamenei, Maduro, Soleimani, the Wagner Group – are widely regarded as odious, which strengthens his prophylactic or reactive action. For all the boilerplate, even Trump's enemies do not gain empathy since their antiwar activism becomes inseparable from the de facto defense of a rogues' gallery of deposed and hated killers and thugs.

5. No to nation-building

There is no nation-building. Trump sees the U.S. as responsible only for lighting the fuse of revolution, then giving the oppressed the chance of something better if they do not miss their chance at regime change and working with the Americans.

6. No boots on the ground

There are few ground troops involved – no chances for an Abu Ghraib misadventure, or humiliating skedaddles from Kabul, or maimed Americans from shaped-charge IEDs.

It is much harder for targets to kill Americans in the air and on the seas. And because there is zero investment in occupying a country and hands-on rebuilding of its institutions, casualties are kept to a minimum. Trump equates deploying a larger ground force in the Middle East with imbecility.

The weapons of choice of Middle East Islamists and terrorists – IEDs, sniper rifles, suicide vests, sudden rocket salvos – are far less effective, given America is fighting its sort of war with overwhelming firepower, technological advantage, and mobility in the air and on the oceans.

Trump prefers overkill to shock and awe, or using minimalist forces. Still, visuals are important. The point is not just to demolish the opposition but to do it with overwhelming redundancy as a global revelation of America's assets, especially for viewing by the Russians, Chinese, and North Koreans.

7. Exit strategy?

There is an exit strategy of sorts, partly rhetorical and partly real – but usually arbitrarily declared by Trump himself. He alone starts the shooting and stops it according to his own definition of when the war begins and ends. The enemy has a vote, of course, but Trump frames the conflict in ways that lessen his say.

Because a transactional rather than ideological Trump holds few grudges, he can announce after taking out Iran's nuclear facilities in summer 2025 that he wishes to "Make Iran great again!"

Or he praises the Venezuelan people and professes to restore their oil industry to its proper profitability and transparency – even as he storms their presidential palace. If the enemy refuses to give up, Trump assumes it eventually will. He has endless patience, both to pound it by air and sea and then, at any moment, praise the defeated and declare the hostilities over.

Critics counter that, without regime change – that so often requires ground troops – rotating the faces of the current Venezuelan or Iranian government will not result in a radical change in the targeted nation's behavior.

8. No to internationalism

Trump cares nothing for the UN's condemnations, given its own moral bankruptcy and lack of credibility. For action outside Europe, he does not really consult NATO and much less the European Union. He assumes all three will follow a predictable script: initially critical, then tentative as the tide of battle turns, and finally either praising Trump's success or eager to get in on itself.

Nor does he worry much about veiled threats from Russia or China. He is careful to consult a key few in Congress, but cares even less that the American Left opposes anything he does. Or rather, he expects their Pavlovian resistance and considers their shrill outbursts and street theater public relations as pluses and the stuff of future campaign ads.

9. Deterrent displays

Trump uses his strikes as global reminders of American prowess. He showcases the USS Gerald R. Ford mammoth carrier, the largest warship in the history of conflict.

Media maps of American naval assets cover four disparate seas surrounding the Iranian theater – the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Persian Gulf, and the Indian Ocean – and derive from Pentagon press releases.

New weaponry is showcased – whether it's a mystery sonic boom weapon at Maduro's presidential palace, a new fleet of kamikaze drones in flight to Iran, or a monstrous new carrier.

10. American self-interest

Trump will not act unless the public can be apprised of American self-interest, and, in a cost-benefit calculation, there is a good chance of success. He has no interest in liberating and rebooting another Iraq and Afghanistan, since their oppressed populations may hate the infidel Americans as much as they do their own oppressors.

Trump saw Bagram Air Base as fortifiable, strategically located, and defensible, and thus in the U.S. interest, but certainly not so the graveyard of empires or the gender studies program at the university in Kabul.

It is no accident that both the targets, Venezuela and Iran, have oil, offering the wherewithal for the liberated without the U.S. having to fund their own restoration. Flipping petro-dictatorships that were proxies under the aegis of China and Russia weakened both.

What Trump says and does are sometimes divergent. Funding Ukraine weakens Russia, which is in the U.S. interest, so Trump finds ways to keep the arms coming mostly without commentary. Letting Israel take care of business and jumping into the war to humiliate Iran last summer unleashed forces that destroyed the Assad regime in Syria – and finally got Russia out of the Middle East.

The present conflict over Iran is the greatest challenge that Trump has faced in either of his two terms. But given his past record, there is a good chance that he will eventually rid Iran of its theocracy – the fleeting hope of the past eight presidents.

For five decades, the Iranian street and its unhinged theocracy scared silly the Middle East with its "Death to America" chants, its promise to destroy the Zionist entity, its brag of going nuclear, and its often overt warnings to rip apart the Sunni-dominated Gulf.

But Trump, with help from Israel, finally revealed the theocracy to be a Keystone Kop kleptocracy. The mullahs screamed "Death to America!" but it was Trump's America that finally brought death to them.

Another Iran Quagmire Might Mean Big Losses for Republicans in the Midterms

 

We’re coming up on the fourth day of war in the Middle East since the United States attacked, along with Israel, the theocratic government in Iran. What is the status of the conflict as I speak, and what will be some possible outcomes? What would be ideal in the Trump administration’s view?

I think you all know that. It would be something along the following lines: a couple of more days of targeted strikes on the Iranian theocratic leadership. The Revolutionary Guard would encourage the people who went out a million strong just a few weeks ago and were slaughtered, this time, they would not fear a diminished government.

And they would take control, storm the political residences, the political meeting places, the political key points of the Iranian government, mass outside them, and you would see some kind of plane come in from the United States with a shah’s son or maybe the interim government in from Paris would fly in and you would have a coalition government.

And then everybody would rejoice. The United States would be popular, and there would be a normalization in the Middle East. And then of course there would be retribution for the murders in this government, committed not just against the United States and Europe and Israel, but against, primarily, the Iranian people.

How do we gauge the pulse of that intended, or desirable, result?

Well, at some point, the Iranians have a finite supply of arms. They have thousands of missiles, we’re told. They had a navy, they had an air force, but they are up against over probably about a thousand jets of various countries, mostly Israeli and the United States, and they are expending a lot of their ordnance attacking almost every Arab country in their vicinity, as well as Cyprus and Israel, and attacking the United States Navy.

And so, they have a finite supply of missiles, drones, and airplanes, and they’re being attrited, demolished, destroyed every day, and they’re not being replenished. You can’t get into Iran. You can’t fly into Iran to give them more arms.

So, they have a finite supply while their enemies do not. That’s very important. And more importantly, what would end the war in their favor would be something like the Iraqi War or the Afghan war. In other words, they would have to kill hundreds or thousands of Americans or Israelis to create public backlash to a degree that would force the leadership to back off.

Or they would have to accomplish stunning strategic victories, maybe blow up the facilities right around the Straits of Hormuz and blockade it somehow. Blow up some ships, make it impossible for 20% of the world’s fossil fuels to get out. That doesn’t seem—they don’t seem to have the wherewithal.

Each day, as I said, their stock of weapons and stock of leaders is diminishing, and there’s no way to resupply it. That’s how we lost in Vietnam. The Chinese and Russian governments were supplying either across the border or at the Port of Hai Phong. And that’s why we didn’t win in Afghanistan, because there was an open border with Pakistan, and that’s why we had trouble in Iraq.

Syria was transferring weapons into Iraq. But this is different. We can isolate the entry and exit into Iran with air power, and we have done that pretty well.

One of the key indicators of the pulse of this war will be the Iranian people. And this is under controversy. People are in disagreement.

When you see your infrastructure go up in smoke, do you say, “Well, I like the Americans, but now they’re starting to blow up apartment buildings, and I don’t know who lives in there. Maybe they’re members of the regime, but that’s gonna cost all of us. And, you know, my third cousin is actually working for Rafsanjani or something. And he’s not all that bad”?

Or will it say, “Thank you. These are the people who butchered us. And when you take them out and you take their infrastructure out, it empowers us, and we’re gonna hit the streets pretty soon”?

Nobody knows that answer. A lot of people opine upon it, but we’ll have to wait a few more days to see what the pulse of battle is.

And what are the attitudes of foreign peoples and nations and countries? The Europeans have been very circumspect. The British government, the French government, at first said they were worried it was dangerous, or they supported the idea, but they didn’t want to have the United States use, in the British case, Diego Garcia.

I think what you’ll see with the British, the French, the Germans, the NATO powers, the EU, it’ll be pretty predictable from past wars.

In other words, number one, they will express guarded optimism and guarded support and then hedge. And then watch the pulse of battle. Put their finger in the air and say, “Who is winning? Is the United States gonna stick around this time?”

If the pulse of battle favors the United States and Israel, then they will climb on and say it’s deplorable what the Iranian government is doing. They attack neutral parties. And then finally, we’ll send some of our assets in kind of a ceremonial performance art fashion.

We might send some French jets or British jets, park them in Oman, park them in Kuwait, and say, “We’re protecting the oil producers of the world against Iranian aggression.” And that’s about it. There won’t be any sizable help, and there won’t be any sizable obstruction. It’ll be rhetorical, and it will be based on whether they think we’re winning or losing.

Russia and China. Russia lost a client with Bashar Hafez al-Assad’s destruction in Syria. He fled to Russia, but Russia didn’t do much to help him.

They didn’t send in a fleet. They didn’t send in convoys of aerial. He had no popular support. But more importantly, Russia’s lost over a million dead, wounded, and missing in Ukraine. They have lost the majority of their tanks. Their air fleet is vastly diminished. They’ve lost oil customers.

They are broke. Their gross domestic product is now almost 50% invested in munitions, but the munitions are being wasted at an astronomical rate. There are maybe 20,000 Russians as well. Dead, wounded, or killed each month. They are in no position to help Iran.

How about China? We just have to go on past behavior.

Did they threaten us over Panama and say, “You leave the Panamanians alone. We cut a deal with them. We have a right to station Chinese Communist-controlled companies at the entry and exit of the canal.” No, they did not.

How about with Venezuela, Mr. Maduro. They said, “How dare you? This was one of our clients. We had inroads into Latin America. Our Silk Road, our Belt and Road project was good for Latin America, and we have a unique relationship.”

No, they didn’t. They didn’t. They’re not going to do anything.

Getting back to our Trump way of war, there was a strategic subtext to all of these incidents that I’m enunciated. And it’s to isolate and weaken China’s influence, especially in the Western Hemisphere, especially in the Middle East, and snap the Europeans back into action.

Finally, what will be the domestic reaction to this war? That will depend again on whether it’s successful.

I don’t want to be too cynical, but as I think I’ve told you once, during the April 2003 invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush, when the statue of Saddam Hussein was toppled, and people were screaming and yelling in jubilation, Iraqis among them, 90% of the American people polled that they supported George Bush’s demolishment of the Hussein government and the liberation of Iraq.

Fast forward to the 2006 midterms, where the Republicans took a shellacking, and support for the war was below 50%. And when George W. Bush left office, he had only about 30% support, and there were only 20% supporting the war.

Did the aims of the war change? No. Maybe a little bit more on nation, but what changed was the cost: 4,000-plus dead, many more wounded, trillion dollars. And for what? An ungrateful Iraqi people, it seemed to us, who now were hand-in-glove working with our arch enemies, the Iranians.

So, you have to be very careful about the polls.

Americans will, by a small majority, want the liberation of Iran if it’s quick, if it doesn’t cost Americans a lot of blood and treasure, and if people around the world pat us on the back for liberating Iran.

If we get stuck in a quagmire where we have to have ground troops, and we get into the hundreds of American dead, it’ll be a disaster for the Republican Party in the midterms.

And finally, what happens with a MAGA base?

And I’m talking about the people who identify with the former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the former Fox anchor Tucker Carlson, some of the more fringe people like Nick Fuentes or Candace Owens or Steve Bannon—the MAGA people, America First, they have been loudly critical of this war in every aspect.

The problem is that part of that criticism has been gloom and doom, and they have predicted it’s not going come out well, or they have predicted that it’s really not in our interest, or that President Donald Trump is a captive of Jewish influences.

All of that does not resonate with a majority of Republicans that support Trump. It doesn’t resonate with the independents.

The Left finds that as sort of a useful idiocy that they can glom onto internal criticism of Trump, but otherwise they have nothing in common with the extreme MAGA base.

So, I don’t think that that will be a hindrance or a brake on operations, except as I just said, if the casualties climb, if we have to put in ground troops, if there is a falling out between us and some of our allies, if the anti-war movement ramps up and takes its fumes, takes an accelerant, I should say, from the Immigration and Customs Enforcement demonstration, the “No Kings” demonstration, the Tesla demonstration and really gets going as it did during the Second Gulf War. Then we could have some problems with the Trump administration’s conduct of war.

I don’t see that yet, and I think there’s a good chance that we can still see a vastly weakened Iran within a month, a triumphant United States.

And the $64,000 question will be, who will be in charge of Iran? And that is very important because you do not—we went twice into Iraq. This is the second time we’ve gone into Iran. You don’t want to go in a third time.

So, it would behoove Donald Trump to find a magical solution of removing the theocratic government, putting a benevolent government in its place without a lot of American blood and treasure, and that’s a hard thing to do.

Trump Laid Out America’s Comeback While Democrats Sat Silent

 

We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate nowWe had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL9706726191

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL9706726191

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL9706726191

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.We had the State of the Union, as we all know, on Tuesday. I think all of us were a little apprehensive when we were told it would be the longest State of the Union. I happen to have watched Bill Clinton’s 2000 State of the Union address.

The Daily Signal depends on the support of readers like you. Donate now https://playlist.megaphone.fm/?e=THEDAILYSIGNAL9706726191

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.

I think it was an hour and 28 minutes. President Donald Trump was, depending where you start the actual measurement of the speech, I think it was about an hour and 48, 50 minutes. Twenty to 25 minutes longer. Bill Clinton’s was considered kind of a disaster. It was too long, and it was just what the Emperor Augustus called res gestae. Just a recap of all the good things he’s done.

So when I heard that, I was a little upset, but when you looked at the actual speech, he got what he had to cover, the bullet points on the economy. And there are many. I mean, inflation the last three months is way below 2%. And he inherited, remember, a five-point, I think it’s a 5.4 average inflation rate under Joe Biden.

It was 21 aggregate inflation over four years divided by four, and gross domestic product was very strong. It was much stronger than people had anticipated. Job growth is not only strong, but it’s U.S. citizens for the vast majority of the new jobs that are created. Interest rates are down.

All of that … gasoline, as he pointed out. In a place in Iowa, it’s under $2. It doesn’t apply to here to us in California. We’re going to be seeing six, seven, and eight this summer because we drove out two large refineries that will be leaving California.

Nevertheless, he got what he needed to say at the very beginning, and then it wasn’t really a State of the Union address. It was more of a variety show. It was an interview when he brought all of these tragic cases of these people.

And they all had one thing in common: whether it was the family that was impacted by the illegal alien truck driver, or it was to show how so many people had been patriotic, or the sudden entry of the hockey team, or the tragic killing of the Ukrainian immigrant on a train.

It was all to show you two things: that we’re a wonderful patriotic country, and the policies of the Democratic opposition had caused, in some cases, these tragedies. And then the Democrats thought they were going to be very, very cute by boycotting. I don’t know. They said 73 or 74, but maybe only 60 actually boycotted.

They wouldn’t stand for any applause, no matter what the topic was, or no matter whether they agreed with it, and they were going to have alternate realities in reply to Donald Trump’s speech. And they were all a disaster, to be quite frank.

Gov. [Abigail] Spanberger of Virginia, she’s added all these taxes. She’s taxing anything that moves or breathes, and she’s talking about her affordability record. I think it was mostly about her.

She thinks, I think, that [Gavin] Newsom, [Kamala] Harris, [Pete] Buttigieg, they’re not viable candidates, and somebody like herself, a dark horse, might emerge in 2028. I don’t think she is. It wasn’t a very inspiring speech.

Sen. Alex Padilla, his reply was incoherent. It was basically that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has no business enforcing the law. I don’t know Spanish all that well, but when I can understand a lot of what he was saying, then he must not be speaking the Spanish that most people do, because I could understand a lot of it, and it seemed incoherent to me.

Then there was at the National Press Corp some weird alternate venue where people dressed up in costumes, and they were screaming and yelling and frogs and giraffes, and … Joy Reid. It didn’t make any sense at all.

And then, the final thing is they didn’t understand Donald Trump. The longest speech in history would mean what?

That they were going to come on Eastern time at 11 o’clock or even 11:30 by the time they got going? So, nobody really heard what they were doing. And when they did have a chance to see and hear them during the actual address, they wouldn’t even stand up for the poor girl who was maimed and tragically disabled by the illegal alien truck driver.

They wouldn’t stand up for the Ukrainian mom who was there, who was lamenting the horrific murder of her child. They wouldn’t stand up for anything.

Rep. Nancy Pelosi, when they talked about outlawing stock, insider stock trading, she looked like she was mummified. It just wasn’t a good look for any of them.

And the polls reflected that. More people thought it was good, very good, or moderately good than bad. About two-thirds of the people liked it. Even some of Trump’s favorability ratings, the Trafalgar poll had him coming up over 50%. So, what shouldn’t have worked at that length worked actually quite brilliantly.

And there’s something about the Democratic Party, whether it’s Rep. Al Green with a sign that he had and disrupting the speech or Rep. Ilhan Omar and Rep. Rashida Tlaib that are screaming “KKK” and “liar.” We used to think that when anybody disrupted a State of the Union, it was terrible.

And the last time we really saw a disruption was Al Green tried to break the cadence of Trump. Then, of course, we had Nancy Pelosi in the first term, who tore up the State of the Union address on national TV. Nobody quite ever would ever do that again. So, my point is that the Democrats really look like they are.

It’s not that they look bad, it’s just that when you look at their field, Gov. Gavin Newsom, [Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], Pete Buttigieg, there’s no one there.

And so, Trump really did pull off something that no one anticipated, that he was going to speak for nearly two hours. And yet, it was a lively variety show with points of triumphalism and happiness and abject sadness.

But, to finish, the Democrats thought they were so smug, but they had no idea what was coming. When he asked everybody to stand if they thought that they would prioritize American citizens over illegal aliens, they thought, “I’m not going to give this person the benefit of ever agreeing with it.” True, they didn’t.

But to the American people, the 50 million or 60 million who watched, it wasn’t about Trump. It was just to reiterate that the policies under Biden were something that they didn’t approve of anymore because they were very unpopular. And what did they do? They sat down.

They wouldn’t even rise. They couldn’t even make that statement that their priorities are American citizens, and that just channels into what we’re going to see in 2026 in November, this next midterm.

There were so many soundbites. There were so many great opportunities in that speech for ads, campaign ads, and you’re going to see a lot of them in November.