An inconvenient Trump truth
Democrats just can't take the L on the border and move on. It's proving Trump's point.
Donald Trump’s speech to a joint session of Congress Tuesday was essentially a disquisition on national security and a celebration of the veritable success he’s had on the issue he believes returned him to the White House: illegal immigration. He uttered the word “border” twenty times in his 100-minute sermon and “criminal” seven, whereas “economy” received just six mentions and “prices” got only three. It’s textbook politics that you lean into your winning hand, and the rest of Trump’s issue matrix looks like a shaken snow globe, particles spinning, swirling and shifting unpredictably. Far from settled. Even before Trump’s on-again-off-again tariffs on Mexico, Canada and China, the nerve-wracked stock market took a tailspin. “A little disturbance,” Trump acknowledged from the dais. And the president’s pledge to secure a lasting peace in Ukraine absorbed a setback a week ago when a shouting match erupted with Volodymyr Zelensky over the state of the war and way to end it. “Do you want to keep it going for another five years? Yeah, yeah, you would say, ‘Pocahontas says yes,’” Trump said, referencing to the Democratic resistance in the House chamber with one of his famed insults. Yet somehow another five looks like a smarter bet than the war ending within the year.
State of the Union night is an Eat Shit affair for the party out of power; a sit-there -and-take-it hazing session. You inevitably look feeble, begrudging and petty, it’s the denouement of an election loss. The Democrats, predictably, protested Trump in a disunified and often glaringly undignified way. Al Green was an easy sacrificial lamb whose stunt antics will be discarded into the dustbin of dubious history. Sorry Mick Mulvaney, a gadfly 78-year-old congressman is not going to cost Democrats a half a dozen seats in an election 20 months away. (The Washington obsession with everything happening *impacting the next election* is as birdbrained as it is boring.) Elizabeth Warren scrolled her phone, Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Maxwell Frost walked out. AOC didn’t bother to show up at all. Clap, stare silently into the abyss or boo? “This is not normal,” read a sign held by rising resistor Rep. Melanie Stansbury.
But here’s what Democrats are missing: A coherent argument against Trump’s strongest hand. In a month’s time, Trump’s mere return as commander in chief