The Rachel Maddow Show
Special coverage of Donald Trump's address to a joint session of Congress
Wed, 5 Mar 2025
Rachel Maddow and a panel of her MSNBC colleagues react to Donald Trump's first address to a joint session of Congress of his second term.
Chapter 1: What was Donald Trump's main message in his Congress address?
That was the longest State of the Union address in American history. Donald Trump addressing Congress for the fifth time in a setting like this. Just looking to see if he's actually going to start speaking again. started off on very contentious terms, Congressman Al Green interrupting at the outset when the president claimed a historic mandate from his victory in the 2024 election.
Congressman Green repeatedly interjecting and then removed by the orders of the sergeant at arms while Republican members of Congress jeered and made gestures toward him, celebrating him being ejected over the course of the president's remarks. see how many empty seats you can see behind him just there.
That's because Democrats as a group filed out quickly when he was done, but a number of Democrats left well before he was done, in the middle of his remarks. They included Jasmine Crockett from Texas, Maxwell Frost walked out, Maxine Dexter from Maryland, Andrea Salinas from Oregon, Ayanna Pressley, Ilhan Omar, Pamila Jayapal. That's only a partial list, a number of Democrats left during
the remarks. The president, in his what we believe was ad-libbing, we did not have prepared remarks from the president, which is unusual. White Houses usually distribute prepared remarks, so we don't know what was digression from those remarks and what was ad-libbed. But the president did repeatedly seem to be ad-libbing when he was remarking on the expected impact of
the economic decisions he's already made six weeks in, saying that the American people would have to bear with him, that there would be a little disturbance, that there would be an adjustment period. And again, he said, a little disturbance, essentially suggesting that the roiling that we saw in the markets is something that he knows he caused, but he hopes people will not mind.
For the record, the worst inflation in this country was in 1980. For the record, the economy that he was left by President Biden was not a catastrophe. It was literally the best economy in the world and was described by The Economist magazine as the envy of the world. That was the economy that was left to Donald Trump by Joe Biden.
For the record, Social Security is not paying benefits in large numbers to 300-year-old people or 250-year-old people or 200-year-old people or 150-year-old people. In fact, the idea of Social Security as a bastion of massive fraud and overpayment is completely false. For the record, U.S.
auto company CEOs are not psyched and delighted and so excited about President Trump's economic policies, including his tariffs. Take, for example, the CEO of Ford, Jim Farley, who said that Trump's tariff policies would, quote, blow a hole in the U.S. auto industry that, quote, we've never seen. The president flat out lied about U.S.
versus European spending to support what used to be our allies in Ukraine. U.S. has committed about $125 billion to Ukraine's defense. Europe has committed about $259 billion. The president radically, radically misstating the character and quantity of our relative support for what used to be our ally now appears to be only Europe's ally and no longer ours.
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Chapter 2: What were the major reactions to Trump's address?
Alyssa Slotkin is a very talented Democratic politician. She's speaking in Michigan tonight from a town that voted for her, but also for Trump for president. Alyssa Slotkin, the freshman senator from Michigan with a Democratic response tonight. Responses from the opposite party on the night of State of the Union addresses are very difficult. That was one of the better ones that I have seen.
Look, she said, as a former CIA officer, I've lived and worked in many countries. I've seen democracies flicker out. I've seen what life is like when a government's rigged. You can't open a business without paying off a corrupt official. You can't criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
So as much as we need to make our government more responsive to our lives today, don't for one moment fool yourself that democracy isn't precious and worth saving. And then she ticks through a three part list of things people watching right now should do in order to stand up for their country. Very, very effectively communicated speech, I thought, Jen.
Yeah. Look, it's the worst assignment in politics. I think you avoid the call and then you always have to say yes. That's sort of what it is when you're doing that speech. That was about as good as it gets, I think, in this moment. I wrote down a couple of other things she said that I think could be good lines for Democrats. I mean, Americans made it clear prices are too high.
That stuck out to me and I wrote it down because that was something nobody wanted to admit leading up to the November election. And it was like not acknowledging what people were experiencing. And that's a lesson coming out of November. Do his plans actually help people get ahead? That is pretty direct and straightforward. That's a good framing way to look at the question.
I also think just to say something about Alyssa Slotkin, there's often this question of do Democrats need to find a celebrity, somebody who's outside of politics? Somebody has six million TikTok followers. She's a mom from Michigan. I doubt she's on TikTok. She's just a pretty normal person who happens to be really smart and got elected to the Senate.
That's the kind of messaging that I think works. The other thing I would just say about the speech, because I think it flows into what she had to say, is I think the speech, I think Democrats need to look at the speech. The volume is the point, as Nicole was saying, right? Volume and chaos and figuring out the whack-a-mole is the point.
If I am them, I am looking at the Social Security sections of that speech. Trump's speech, yeah. Of the Trump speech. Sorry, to go back to the Trump speech. And I am figuring out how to put that. It's not really a time for television ads, but put that out, respond on that, focus on the thing. You can oppose everything he said, but you have to pick something. A thousand flowers cannot bloom.
And the Social Security piece, especially given the former Social Security administrator said this week that that program, they may not be able to make payments. They may not make payments in the next 30 to 90 days. That's what he said, Martin O'Malley. So there's a lot of backdrop here. If I'm them, that's what I pick.
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Chapter 3: What inaccuracies were highlighted in Trump's speech?
watched you react to most strongly was when he said, the media and our friends in the Democrat Party keep saying we need new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president. What bugged you so much about that?
I think the demonization of immigrants in the speech today was as disappointing as it was frightening. And the thing that bothered me is It's a multifaceted approach that we need to attack the immigration problem, and it's been an issue over multiple presidents.
Which you yourself have been working on in terms of efficiency.
Definitely. Part of it are legislative fixes, but the other part are really process and tech improvements. And by getting rid of the subject matter experts that... do this work for decades, and the people who have the tech capabilities. And then, more importantly, the trust that you build between agencies to actually align and prioritize this work is really, really difficult to see.
You can gut something in five minutes, but to get the apparatus back up and running, that might take five years. So, it was really disappointing to see some of those comments.
For a very brief moment, and Rachel referenced this earlier, you worked for Doge because the U.S. Digital Service became Doge. And when the president said that he has saved, I want to make sure I get this right, hundreds of billions of dollars, your reaction was you just shook your head.
Yeah, I think, as we've seen before, a lot of those savings that they have touted have been slowly removed as people see some of that discrepancy in the numbers. And I think it's really important for people to go back, keep checking the website, and hold Doge accountable for the things that they are and aren't doing.
All right. And let's go to Alex Taylor, who's our geologist again in the group. We heard President Trump talk about something you worked directly on, which was critical earth minerals. He said that he was, quote, expanding critical minerals and rare earths. But he fired you. That's what you were working on.
Yeah, I supported active research projects on identifying sources of critical minerals in the U.S. domestically. It bothers me that he's more interested in engaging in neocolonialism to get minerals from other countries, rather than supporting the scientists and the researchers who are aiding the minerals industry here in America. You're talking about Greenland. And Ukraine.
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