It was as predictable as a rom-com — just as surely as you knew they’d end up together, we knew how President Trump’s first speech to Congress was going to go.
It was full of Trumpisms — partisan jabs, personal attacks, absurd exaggerations, outright lies, and lots of self-flattery.
It hit all the MAGA high notes, but it also was missing something…something pretty important.
As crucial an issue as the economy was in getting Trump elected, it seemed like a total afterthought just six weeks into his first term.
Despite poll after poll showing it was the economy that mattered most to voters when going to the ballot boxes, Trump devoted just 13:53 minutes — of more than 90 — to the issue.
New polling from CBS News reveals that before his address, 70% of Americans wanted to hear Trump talk about lowering prices. In 90 minutes he never mentioned how or if he’s lowering the cost of everyday goods for Americans.
Eighty-two percent said the economy should be a high priority — only 36% of Americans say Trump is making it one.
Eighty percent said inflation should be a high priority — only 29% say it is.
But here’s a list of just some of the things he talked about before he got to America’s top concern:
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Making English the official language of the United States.
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Removing critical race theory from public schools.
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Making it official policy that there are only two genders.
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Banning men from playing in women’s sports.
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Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America.
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Renaming Denali Mount McKinley.
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Ending DEI policies across the federal government and military.
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Beating out George Washington in an imaginary poll of greatest presidents.
None of these things — not one — made voters’ top 10 of important issues.
Trump may have put on a predictable show Tuesday night, but the performance Democrats gave wasn’t much better.
Raising ping-pong paddles and white boards with sayings like “This is not normal,” “Start paying your taxes,” and “Musk steals” looked juvenile and unserious. Rep. Al Green’s numerous interruptions, which eventually led to his removal from the chamber, were annoying and ineffectual. And the plan to stand and clap for nothing — including a mother whose daughter was brutally murdered, a boy who survived cancer, law enforcement, and the capture of an ISIS terrorist mastermind — was a truly shameful and terrible one.
Clearly, the Democratic Party still hasn’t figured out how to combat Trump and his railroading Republicans yet, because that wasn’t it. The opposition needs to remember that they’re against Trump and his policies, and not the American people and the problems they’re worried about.
One Democrat seems to get it. Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, tapped to give the Dem response, was the best I’ve heard at effective messaging to win voters back.
In her brief and dispassionate address, she boasted of “patriotism,” a word Dems have long ceded to the right in favor of denigrating Americans as racist and bigoted for opposing liberal policies.
She talked about the working class and the American Dream, not the radical liberal pet issues that appeal only to the fringes of the party.
She talked proudly of her Republican dad, not like someone who’s never met a Republican and who’d probably hate them if they did.
Rather than insisting anxiety over the economy, crime and immigration was unfounded, she acknowledged “Americans made it clear that prices are too high and that government needs to be more responsive to their needs.”
She agreed, “we need to bring down the price of things we spend the most money on: groceries, housing, health care, your car.” And, instead of bashing the very idea of DOGE while offering no alternatives, she admitted, “We need more efficient government — you want to cut waste, I’ll help you do it.”
She knocked Trump for “the mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing, and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer — only to rehire them two days later.” She called his cuts “chaotic” and “reckless,” which they are.
But the most important thing she said was a simple three word sentence: “America wants change.” The inability of her Democratic colleagues to confront, admit, and then say this out loud has been their biggest obstacle to winning voters back.
So, if there was a bright spot on Tuesday night, it was in Slotkin’s response — hope that there’s at least one Democrat who gets it, who may know how to navigate what will undoubtedly be a fraught, chaotic, even scary four years. Will the rest of her party listen?