Trump’s Speech Last Night Was A Warning— And The Democratic Leadership Is Largely Ignoring It

History's Warning: Weak Opposition Enables Fascism

After Trump had finished his 100 minutes of campaign rally lies and grievances, Jake Sherman, John Bresnahan and Andrew Desiderio wrote that “The annual presidential address to Congress— once a dignified event that was the height of American political pomp and circumstance— has devolved into a tired display of pettiness and hyper-partisanship. We’re not sure what the average American— or anyone— gets out of this anymore…Trump bashed Democrats over not applauding for him or recognizing any of his triumphs, as if Republicans did that for his predecessors. Trump claimed voters had delivered him a mandate, although they didn’t. Trump [petrified and very aware that he himself is, hands-down, the worst president ever] called Joe Biden ‘the worst president in American history,’ while also asserting that Oracle and OpenAI wouldn’t have invested $500 billion in the United States if Kamala Harris had won. ‘Our country will be woke no longer,’ Trump said, slamming diversity, equity and inclusion as useless policies from the left. Trump at one point insulted Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) by calling her ‘Pocahontas,’ a remark that elicited boos and groans from Democrats… Trump plumbed levels of disrespect and scorn for his political opponents that no other president has ever reached— at least not in public.”

The trio of PunchBowl reporters wrote that “Throughout the speech, Democrats held [small] signs that said ‘Save Medicaid,’ ‘Musk Steals’ and ‘False.’ These were coordinated by the Congressional Progressive Caucus… A few Democratic lawmakers wearing ‘Resist’ t-shirts left the chamber in the middle of Trump’s speech. Others yelled ‘Liar!’ and ‘False!’ when Trump went on about disparities in Social Security records.”

The first Dems to head for the exits included Jasmine Crockett (TX), Melanie Stansbury (NM), LaMoinica McIver (NJ), Maxwell Frost (FL) and Lateefah Simon (CA), soon followed out of the lie-fest by Veronica Escobar (TX), Pramila Jayapal (WA), Ilhan Omar (MN), Jamie Raskin (MD), Mark Pocan (WI), Judy Chu (CA), Lloyd Doggett (TX), Alan Pressley (MA), and Jared Huffman (CA). Other Dems, including AOC (NY), Becca Balint (VT), Maxine Waters (CO), Jan Schakowsky (IL), Don Beyer (VA), Diana DeGette (CO), Gerry Connolly (VA) and Kweisi Mfume (MD).

Earlier, Sen Chris Murphy told his constituents why he wouldn’t be attending. “Plenty of my colleagues will be there. That’s a decision that every Democrat needs to make for themselves. But I think it’s going to be a farce— a MAGA pep rally— not a serious address to the nation. Most Americans are not going to watch this speech live, and I trust that those who do will be able to hear how detached Trump is from reality— and the Republican cult in the room cheering on his every word. But most people will have no clue what happens in that room. They will see chopped-up clips shared on social media or repackaged in some other news media program tomorrow. I refuse to play part in the social decorum of Washington because I believe what Trump and Musk are doing is an existential threat to our democracy. They are seizing and dismantling our government to entrench their power and push their Billionaires First agenda. Instead, I’ll be taking part in a counter-programming effort with a few colleagues and activists. We’ll watch the speech and respond in real time— cutting through the lies and BS you expect from Trump.”

Elizabeth Warren called what Trump’s been doing up til now “a sandstorm of chaos to try to distract us from his real agenda: Tax cuts for billionaires, paid for by cuts to health care and Social Security. These are programs that mommas and daddies and babies and seniors rely on every single day. Trump and his unelected co-president Elon Musk are dismantling our government, piece by piece, so that it works better for those same billionaires and worse for everyone else. The whole Republican plan fits on a bumper sticker: Billionaires win; families lose. Trump promised, you may remember, to lower costs ‘on day one.’ Instead, he and co-President Musk have tried to fire the financial cops that keep Americans from getting cheated. They have slashed funding that supports research for cures for cancer and Alzheimer’s. And they have fired thousands of hardworking public servants, including the people who keep us safe when we fly on airplanes, the people who make sure that nuclear materials are safely stored, and people who inspect our food.”

Hakeem Jeffries, the wrong man for a congressional leadership role, discouraged protests, as though this were just another run-of-the-mill state of the union address. He doesn’t seem to get the stakes. Andrew Solender reported that many Democrats were “facing a torrent of pressure from their grassroots base to stage more overt acts of resistance, but a good chunk of the party feels that too rowdy a display could backfire.”

Tom Nichols had a different message: Democrats are acting too normal… and they picked one of the worst possible members of Congress to give their rebuttal to Trump. An ex-CIA agent, daughter of wealth, right-of-center Rep and with a vile record of approving Trump cabinet members, Elissa Slotkin “failed to convey any sense of real urgency or alarm. Her speech could have been given in Trump’s first term, perhaps in 2017 or 2018, but we are no longer in that moment. The president’s address was so extreme, so full of bizarre claims and ideas, exaggerations and distortions and lies, that it should have called his fitness to serve into question. He preened about a Cabinet that includes some of the strangest, and least qualified,  members in American history. Although his speech went exceptionally long, he said almost nothing of substance, and the few plans he put forward were mostly applause bait for his Republican sycophants in the room and his base at home… [I]n her response, Slotkin failed to capture the hallucinatory nature of our national politics. As a former Republican, I nodded when Slotkin said that Ronald Reagan would be rolling in his grave at what Slotkin called the ‘spectacle’ of last week’s Oval Office attack on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. But is that really the message of a fighting opposition? Is it an effective rallying cry either to older voters or to a new generation to say, in effect, that Reagan— even now a polarizing figure— would have hated Trump? (Of course he would have.) Isn’t the threat facing America far greater than that?”

“Slotkin’s address,” he wrote, “suffered from the same half-heartedness that has seized the Democrats since last November. Her response, and the behavior of the Democrats in general, showed that they still fear being a full-throated opposition party, because they believe that they will alienate voters who will somehow be offended at them for taking a stand against Trump’s schemes… [America] needs an opposition party that boldly defends the nation’s virtues, the rule of law, and the rights of its people.” And that sure wasn’t Elissa Slotkin last night, not even in the eyes of an ex-Republican like Nichols. Imagine if AOC or Chris Murphy or Elizabeth Warren had given the rebuttal. The discussion this morning would be very different than Slotkin's unmemorable yawner.

History doesn’t remember the polite objectors, the ones who wagged their fingers at creeping authoritarianism but insisted on following the norms as it hollowed out democracy from the inside. It remembers the ones who fought back. The ones who understood that when a strongman seizes power, decorum is a death sentence. Last night, the was a demagogue standing at the podium, not a true American president— taunting his enemies, rewriting reality and laying the groundwork for a second term of unrestrained grievance, larceny and vengeance. And how did the so-called opposition respond? Some walked out. Some held up signs. Some shouted the truth in a chamber built for lies. But the party leadership, the people with actual power, recoiled from the idea of real resistance. They scolded their own ranks for being too disruptive, as if democracy can be saved with quiet disapproval. As if fascism has ever been defeated with polite objections.

Schumer and Jeffries should know better; but they don't. The world has seen this story before. The Weimar politicians who thought they could contain Hitler. The French moderates who thought they could negotiate with Vichy. The Russian liberals who assumed Putin’s rise was a temporary aberration. Every single one of them made the same fatal miscalculation: that the machinery of democracy would withstand the weight of a determined autocrat, that institutions alone could hold the line. They were wrong. Trump’s Adderall-fueled speech was a declaration of intent. He’s telling us exactly what he will do. And yet, far too many Democrats still act like they’re in a normal political contest, not a battle against an unhinged, vengeful authoritarian who will dismantle democracy the second he’s given the chance.

What we would have liked to have seen

Unmentioned last night was that Trump had ordered the U.S. military to cut off intelligence sharing with Ukraine, “a move that could seriously hamper the Ukrainian military’s ability to target Russian forces,” Putin’s wet dream. “US intelligence co-operation has been essential for Ukraine’s ability to identify and strike Russian military targets.”

UPDATE: Like The Rest of Us, Josh Weil Heard Trump’s Lies

With his April 1 congressional election rapidly approaching, Josh Weil watched the Trump shitshow with clear eyes last night and then told voters in his central Florida district that “Trump's plan to tackle the trade deficit through tariffs doesn't attempt to create a balance in trade by spurring Canadians to buy more, it increases the cost of Canadian goods to Americans to reduce our purchasing by making everything more expensive. It's a policy that we literally cannot afford.” If you’d like to help Josh get his message out in the crucial final weeks of the campaign, please contribute to his get out the vote efforts here.