Donald Trump makes history—by delivering the longest Joint Address ever, clocking in at an exhausting 99 minutes of blame, grievance, and sappy stunts. Jon, Lovett, Dan, and Tommy break down all the biggest—and weirdest—moments, from warning of a "disturbance" from the new tariffs, to invading Greenland and cutting off funding for transgender mice (yes, really). Plus, they debate how Rep. Al Green's protest will play, the strengths and weaknesses of Sen. Elissa Slotkin's rebuttal, and what Democrats should do now. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email [email protected] and include the name of the podcast.
Chapter 1: Who are the hosts of Pod Save America?
Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Jon Favreau. I'm Jon Lovett. I'm Dan Pfeiffer. Tommy Vitor. So that was the speech. It was the longest. Donald Trump just gave the longest State of the Union in history. What was the final count? The final count was 99 minutes. So that's the longest speech in history. It was... I don't know. Anyone have thoughts off the bat? It felt longer than 99 minutes. It did.
Chapter 2: What were the key moments of Trump's State of the Union?
It did. It was a lot of...
Lots of long descriptions of hideous, awful crimes. Yeah.
His speeches are always long. They're always long, yeah. I mean, look, it was a greatest hit speech peppered in with some new stunts and interesting, scary moments. But like a lot of what we've heard before. But he's really relishing in it. He's really enjoying his time up there.
Yeah, you could – with Trump, it's always he can give his rally-esque speech or he can give a more formal joint address. In this case, he decided to do both.
Yeah. Right. I would say it was not surprising in any way. No, nothing really new. Like it felt – What I expected, we said this before in our livestream, like a lot of accomplishments for most of the speech, very little news, new policy, and we'll go through some of it. I think what was notable is at the beginning, you know, he did his,
uh we've had the greatest month in any from of any president in history number two was george washington bob us he's bragging bragging and then early on um there was a little bit of an interruption uh at the beginning of the speech so let's listen to that we won the popular vote by big numbers and won counties in our country
Mr. Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir. Take your seat. Finding that members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant at arms to restore order. Remove this gentleman from the chamber.
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Chapter 3: How did the protest during Trump's speech unfold?
So that was something. So Donald Trump does his whole, you know, we won seven swing states, greatest popular vote victory ever. How much you even bench, bro?
Yeah.
A bunch of Democrats start making some noise. Al Green of Texas starts interrupting him. And then, you know, Mike Johnson was ready for it and decided he was going to tell the sergeant of arms to get rid of him.
yeah what did you guys think of that so his line right is you have no mandate to cut medicaid that's what he that's what he was that's what that was the message of his protest so at least you know he's trying to make a moment about medicaid that's what that's all that's just to quote the man yeah and to you know it was an act of protest yeah like it didn't bother me it didn't not like it wouldn't it's not what i would have done but it didn't bother me i kind of
Didn't hate that it interrupted Trump and got him out of his flow for like 10 minutes. Wait till the Republicans compare it to January 6th. That's when this is going to get really annoying. Yeah.
You mean when a bunch of protesters were in the chamber desecrating, breaking down the doors of Congress, and then Trump pardoned them all?
I'm shocked that many of them weren't invited as the guests of Republicans tonight.
Yeah, I thought there would be more of that, more January 6th.
Curry favor with them before January 6th next time. I think there are a couple of points here. One is... If you watch the video, there's something really fascistic about the whole thing, the way Trump, when he starts protesting, points at the door. And then J.D. Vance starts pointing, and then you see Mike Johnson sort of point at the Sergeant of Arms to tell them to go get Al Green.
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Chapter 4: Did Trump's claims during the speech have factual inaccuracies?
Because, you know, like there are people joking like, oh, Democrats, if you really think Donald Trump is an authoritarian menace, wearing different colored hats is a very silly thing to do. Right. Like, you know, in response to the authoritarian menace, we coordinated our outfits. That sounds ridiculous. And we didn't because there were people in purple, people in white.
He thought he was going to lie, but we had signs that said false.
Right. And then some people coordinated pink and purple and white. And then it's like, well, that's just a bunch of different outfits. But like the... Then you think, okay, so what should Democrats do, right? Should they just, like, this, you know, don't lend Donald Trump the pomp and circumstance of the State of the Union, or really a joint address to Congress, to be exact.
Call it State of the Union. But, like, then you say, all right, Democrats either walk out or they don't show up. Like, what does that get us, right? Like, we kind of look childish. We look like we're not being, like, we look partisan. So I don't know what the right thing to do is. Like, I don't know if protesting is. I don't know if sitting there is.
It's tough because it's hard to feel because we don't have a lot of power.
It's worth remembering, though, when MTG, Marjorie Taylor Greene, interrupted Joe Biden, he then had that back and forth with her. He looked really strong and like he was kind of sharp and, you know, making light of it, kind of making fun of her a bit. And it was a good moment for him. And, you know, I don't know if MTG keeps standing and won't sit down and keeps screaming.
Maybe the sergeant of arms kicks her out. But I do think Dan's point is... right, that it did look a little authoritarian in the moment.
Yeah, but he also didn't want, like Marjorie Greene didn't, she sat down, Al Green didn't. The thing is also Trump didn't have like a whole exchange. He kind of didn't.
No, he was just like, get her out. Yeah. It just. not to go all Daniel Dale on this, but Al Green's right. There is no mandate for Medicaid cuts. And what Trump said about his mandate was fucking absurd.
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Chapter 5: How might recent tariffs affect the economy?
yeah if you really wanted to focus on inflation and take it seriously you would and you wanted to you know indirectly or even directly blame the last administration say i inherited this mess the costs were high and now i'm going to take it seriously and you know scott besant said on this treasury secretary said this weekend i think on the sunday shows we're creating an affordability czar or something like that which is of course but
In a State of the Union— You could say that. Yeah, you could say that, and then you can add some policy around it. You can do this thing. He just—he kind of— He didn't even try. I mean, he—we'll talk about the tax—he talked about the tax cuts. I guess we can talk about that now.
Talk about tax cuts, talk about energy prices.
Yeah, but also the tax cuts. He's like—he did the no tax on tips. He did the no tax on overtime, no tax on Social Security benefits. He added no—the loans on a car loan, the interest on a car loan will be tax deductible. Keep in mind, none of this— None of that is in the Republican budget that passed. So, like, it's Trump's party. He's like, maybe they'll get in later. Maybe the Senate will do it.
But none of the stuff that he talked about, the tax cuts for, like, actual working people, middle class people, are in the budget that passed. It's, like, largely tax cuts for rich people.
Yeah, and the taxing interest on car loans is, like, a very regressive tax cut.
And just like all of these things, no tax on tip, the social security, making social security tax deductible, all these things are ways of saying you're doing a bunch of middle class tax cuts when in actuality you're going to do a giant tax cuts for the rich and only bring down rates for the middle class a tiny bit and spend a little bit extra if you do it at all on some of these other ways of lowering taxes.
But of course, like, OK, so you've decided you're not taxing tips for somebody that's a waiter. But if you're a barista and you don't make as much on tips, you still pay the rate you paid before. Like, why do those people not deserve a tax break? Right. Like I'm fine. Cut the taxes on tips.
But like you're choosing between different working class people to make that part of the bill cheaper while doing a massive multi-trillion dollar tax cut for the richest people.
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Chapter 6: What foreign policy issues were discussed in the State of the Union?
The Danes are shitting their fucking pants right now.
He started that section on Greenland by saying, we support whatever the people of Greenland want to do, but we're going to get you one way or the other. Yeah. That's how we ended it. And there was some stuff in between about how he was going to take Greenland to new heights.
Yeah, and initially when he made that comment. What heights? What is he going to do? Trump Greenland? And I don't know if you guys noticed, when he first mentioned Greenland, J.D. Vance and Speaker Johnson kind of started chuckling. And then by the end, they were like, oh. They were excited about the Greenland question. Yeah.
the green he that's it's real he really he's it's one way or the other so that was foreign policy and then he did a bunch of he called out people in the guest box he does that a couple stunts um what else stood out to you guys in the speech and then there was like an there was like five endings that were like literally copy pasted from other trump speeches it's about like crossing new frontiers and going to the moon and all that bullshit
We should talk about the stunts a little bit. Some of the stunts, right? So we had, there was one moment that was actually like kind of sweet where there's this boy that had had some kind of cancer And it's like wanted to be a police officer. And clearly they didn't know how long he was going to live. So he became honorary police officer.
And then he made him an honorary member of the Secret Service. And he had a really sweet look on his face. And I found that moving. And then some more cynical people ripped me to fucking pieces. But then it became an actually RFK Jr. is going to look into the chemical causes of various illnesses.
And by the way, we're going to go after autism. He insinuated that it came from chemicals, which Maha's got to fix. And then we got to go to autism. It was a really weird transition.
And then you remember that he's currently gutting the National Institutes of Health. That's where the transgender mice research was done, but also some cancer research that you might've been familiar with. And he's going after Medicaid and he's going after... And by the way, he launched an insurrection against the police at the Capitol in which this event was taking place. So...
Yes, it is a cynical thing, but the moment did work on me. He did admit one guy to West Point, too? Yeah, that was good, too. That was good, too.
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Chapter 7: What are the potential political consequences of the tariffs?
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