Good evening. Tonight we’ll look at how the online right and left portrayed the State of the Union.
How did Trump do? Choose your own algorithmic adventure.
Whew. That was a lot. If you watched President Trump’s big speech last night, you know what I’m talking about. At one hour and 47 minutes, his address was the longest State of the Union on record. Whether you found it exhilarating, enraging or exhausting — or you just kept tabs online — your social media algorithms may have helped shape your impressions of how the speech went. What the right sawIf you followed along on right-wing social media, you would have heard about a historically strong and effective speech. In the (caricatured) telling of right-leaning media personalities and politicians, the address exposed Democrats as “CRAZY” people who are sympathetic to undocumented immigrants but not to crime victims, hockey Olympians or American citizens more broadly. “Moment of the night: Democrats refusing to stand to affirm their allegiance to American citizens over illegal aliens,” the conservative pundit Scott Jennings wrote on social media, referring to the trap Trump laid for Democrats. “Will be signature moment of this speech. Trump nailed them.” The White House account on X issued a longer list of policies Democrats supposedly oppose, or at least did not rise for during Trump’s speech. And the account Libs of TikTok, with its 4.6 million followers on X, was succinct in declaring, “Democrats hate America,” while several accounts highlighted a handful of Democrats shouting at Trump in the chamber. What the left sawIf you were following left-leaning social media accounts, some of the most significant moments seemed to take place in the form of offstage — or off-site — resistance. In the House chamber, Representative Al Green, a Texas Democrat, displayed a sign that read in capital letters, “Black people aren’t apes!,” an apparent reference to a racist video clip Trump posted on social media. Green was soon escorted out — but the scene blazed across the internet. “AL GREEN IS MY GOAT DONT YOU DARE LAY A HAND ON HIM!” wrote Hasan Piker, a Twitch streamer, using the acronym for “greatest of all time.” Representative Ilhan Omar of Minnesota also attracted attention and progressive plaudits for shouting at Trump, “You’ve killed Americans!” Down on the National Mall, Democratic lawmakers and liberal activists who were boycotting the speech held a live-streamed event — called the “People’s State of the Union” — that organizers said drew more than 35 members of Congress. It earned more than four million views across platforms (though that figure may include conservatives who mocked the event on social media). And in Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia, Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered the Democratic response, which was well-received by party strategists and online influencers alike. “OBLITERATED: Abigail Spanberger just HUMILIATED Trump after his BORING Pettysburgh Address,” declared an account called Call to Activism, adding a siren emoji. “She made him look old. Tired. Boring.” Will it matter for the midterms?However Trump seemed to viewers, it’s not clear that he gave voters in the middle a reason to look differently at his party headed into another midterm election campaign. As my colleagues Tyler Pager and Luke Broadwater wrote, “he dutifully ticked off a list of economic indicators — the stock market, price of gas, mortgage rates, job growth — as evidence of the ‘roaring economy.’ But he appeared less willing to acknowledge that Americans were still struggling,” an approach that went terribly for former President Joe Biden, as we’ll get into below. Trump put on a show and tried to disqualify Democrats as extreme — but he introduced few new policies for his own party to run on. And ultimately, whatever you thought of the speech, State of the Union performances are not predictive of future political standing. Just ask Biden, who delivered a spirited State of the Union speech in March 2024, an address that briefly assuaged Democratic anxieties about his age and ability to seek re-election. Less than five months later, he was out of the race.
Why Democrats are having 2024 flashbacksHe insisted to voters that the economy is better than they believe. He bashed his predecessor. He trumpeted a turnaround that voters aren’t seeing. Trump and Biden have little in common, but when it comes to how they have talked about the state of the economy, there are parallels. Trump’s pitch is giving some former top Biden economic and White House advisers a “bad case of déjà vu,” as my colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Reid J. Epstein put it. Got a tip? ONE NUMBER 64 percentThat’s the share of State of the Union viewers who had a positive reaction to last night’s address, according to a new CNN poll of speech watchers. Ruth Igielnik, The Times’s polling editor, explains. People who sit down to watch the State of the Union address typically feel more positively toward the president than the population overall. So it is perhaps not surprising that Trump got solid marks. But ratings of last night’s address are a tick lower than views of his speech last year to a joint session of Congress. And they are 6 percent to 14 percent cooler than what viewers felt about speeches during Trump’s first term. Still, the speech seemed to sway some viewers. Before the speech, 44 percent of respondents said Trump was focused on the right priorities. After the speech, that rose to 54 percent.
THE 2026 HOUSE FIGHT A Republican in a squeezeRepublicans in swing House districts are already feeling caught between voters unhappy with the Trump administration — and the demands of a party dominated by Trump. Today, my colleague Tracey Tully sends in a dispatch from New Jersey: Representative Thomas Kean Jr.’s re-election fight was never expected to be easy. A second-term Republican, Kean represents an affluent swing district in New Jersey that backed Gov. Mikie Sherrill, a Democrat, over her Trump-endorsed opponent by about two points. But in the past month, the Trump administration has made Kean’s re-election effort in the Seventh Congressional District significantly more complicated. First there was a tug of war over federal funding for a Hudson River train tunnel known as Gateway, which many residents are counting on to help make their unpredictable commutes into New York City more reliable. Then Immigration and Customs Enforcement bought a warehouse in the district to use as a migrant detention center, over objections from Republican leaders, who have blamed the congressman for failing to block it. Kean now appears to have been caught in the middle of tension between the Pentagon and the Federal Aviation Administration over a bill designed to make air travel safer, particularly near congested hubs like New York and New Jersey. On Tuesday, he was the only member of New Jersey’s House delegation to vote against the bipartisan measure, which would have required planes to carry tracking technology that federal investigators say could have helped avoid a midair collision near Washington last year that killed 67 people. The bill passed the Senate unanimously in December, but the Pentagon pulled its support for the legislation on Monday. The measure failed by one vote. Kean’s chief of staff, Dan Scharfenberger, said in an email that the bill was “not the right reform.” He said Kean would instead back alternative legislation that would address more of the recommendations made by the National Transportation Safety Board after the crash over the Potomac. Still, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee was quick to highlight Kean’s vote, noting that one of the people killed in the crash near Washington grew up in a town adjacent to where Kean lives.
ONE LAST THING A reprise for white outfits at the State of the UnionLast night, a group of Democratic congresswomen showed up to Trump’s State of the Union address wearing white. It was the latest iteration of female lawmakers using their outfits to protest this president, a tradition that began in 2017 when several House members wore “suffragist white” in support of women’s rights. My colleague Jesse McKinley explored past Trump protests through clothing. |
