Trump Touts Action as Democrats Sit in Silence
State of the Union speech meets faltering “opposition”
Trump’s man-of-action speech last night could not have contrasted more sharply with the lifeless congressional Democrats in attendance. While Trump touted his “swift and unrelenting action,” the Democrats silently held up little placards saying things like “FALSE” and “MUSK STEALS,” looking like wealthy bidders at a Sotheby's auction.
“This is NOT normal,” read one sign held by congresswoman Melanie Stansbury — as though normalcy and the status quo is something anyone wants these days.
The optics were stark. There you had a frat party vibe with Republicans filling the hall with chants of “USA, USA, USA!” in honor of their jock king while the Democrats sat around looking like student government types flipping through Robert’s Rules of Order to see what kind of protest was permitted.
At the encouragement of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries — who called it “important to have a strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber,” — the Democrats attended, not wanting to challenge the symbolism and sanctity of the formal occasion. The only exception was Rep. Al Green, who was removed from the chamber after the 77 year old stood up to wave his cane at Trump, shouting “You have no mandate to cut Medicaid!”
(This is the same congressman who instantly became a meme after shaking his cane alongside Senator Chuck Schumer who chanted “we will win!” at a protest against DOGE.)
For a moment, I thought that we’d see the Democrats shouting something and interrupting Trump every five minutes until they were down to the last protester. But nothing of the sort happened. These A-student types were unwilling to violate decorum even as they tsk-tsked in their prim silence.
A friend lamented to me that he had wanted to root for the display but just could not take the guy seriously. Green’s outburst reminded me of when during Obama’s first State of the Union speech, Republican Rep. Joe Wilson stood up to shout “You lie!” People were so scandalized that his own party made him issue an apology. Those days are gone, as last night demonstrated.
How the Democrats still don’t realize that is beyond me. Did they learn nothing from the election? For the next four years, decorum isn’t going to cut it.
“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations,” Trump said, touting his “nearly 100 executive orders” and “more than 400 executive actions” over the past six weeks.
While his machine-gun pace of executive orders now totaling 76 is not completely without precedent (FDR issuing 99 in his first 100 days), it’s certainly the most I’ve seen in my lifetime.
“If you’re going to get caught, get caught looking busy,” the saying goes. Trump seems to have heeded this advice. Again and again his DOGE has gotten caught — slashing programs, penetrating databases, pressuring federal workers to quit, demanding weekly report cards, banishing keywords deemed to be “DEI” — but amid all the criticism, this creates the appearance that Trump is Doing Something.
I’ve criticized much of what Trump is doing, but to any ordinary person not brain-addled by consuming as much news as, well, I do, Trump must look like the man-of-action his speech portrayed.
The “win” Trump focused on most in his speech was in the field of immigration.
“Within hours of taking the oath of office, I declared a national emergency on our southern border, and I deployed the U.S. military and Border Patrol to repel the invasion of our country,” Trump said.
The media has tended to focus on the Trump administration’s attack on federal workers but what he’s doing at the border is deeply significant and should not be ignored. Declaring illegal immigration an “invasion” and designating various gangs and cartels as “terrorists” has profound national security implications, legal experts say, potentially allowing him to invoke extraordinary wartime powers that would infringe on everyone’s civil liberties.
We’re already starting to see some exercises of national security authority. The CIA has reportedly expanded a covert program to fly drones over Mexico as part of its war on drug cartels. U.S. special forces also began a training exercise in Mexico last month focused on drug cartels, as one special operations source told me. The military is becoming more and more engaged, now eyeing unilateral cross border actions.
Trump’s orders have given the military unprecedented authority. While the military has in the past played a role assisting law enforcement, they are now deputized and authorized to actively participate in border enforcement, which for the first time is a formal priority for the Pentagon.
Take a look at how broad the language of Trump’s executive order is:
“It is the policy of the United States to ensure that the Armed Forces of the United States prioritize the protection of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the United States along our national borders … deliver to the President a revision to the Unified Command Plan that assigns United States Northern Command (USNORTHCOM) the mission to seal the borders and maintain the sovereignty, territorial integrity, and security of the United States by repelling forms of invasion including unlawful mass migration, narcotics trafficking, human smuggling and trafficking, and other criminal activities.”
Countless changes to immigration policy are happening outside the Pentagon as well. To give just one example, I know from my own sources at Homeland Security, that the Border Patrol is now collecting photos, fingerprints and other biometric data on child migrants under the age of 14, just to give just one example.
Many of these actions go unreported in an environment where the Democratic opposition and the news media report more on broken rules and perform fact checking than they do on government power and dysfunction, especially in the national security field.
Of course there’s plenty of errors the fact checking crowd can find in Trump’s every utterance, but his general theme, that he’s a man-of-action who is focused, is unmistakably true. Until the Democrats can learn to get caught Doing Something, anything — even just protest theater during a State of the Union speech — Trump’s power is going to go unchecked.
— Edited by William M. Arkin
So right Ken. One news source described the Dems as "sullen and silent" they need to stop moping and start shouting
Yes. Total agreement. As a lifelong and proud democrat last night's "response" left me shaken with disappointment. The rules of engagement have changed utterly since 2009. The democratic "leadership" is flighting the last war. I honestly don't know what the right response might have been, but I think AOC and the other few who skipped out entirely, had the right idea. An effective response would have haven every single democratic attendee standing with their back to the podium, and/or all walking out of the chamber, at once, by the hundreds, in unison. Or - as you suggest - Al Greening, every 60 seconds, until they're all outside the chamber. Whatever response they made should have been coordinated and unified. The actual response was an embarrassment.