Much has been made of the trap that President Trump sprang on congressional Democrats during his State of the Union address: baiting them to stand in response to his statement about valuing the protection of American citizens over the protection of “illegal aliens,” which was his prelude to his denunciation of sanctuary cities. (Since it was clear that the president was going to spring some such gotcha moment, it’s not clear why Democrats didn’t all just boycott his speech. Did their congressional leaders actually think Trump wouldn’t make their vilification the real topic of his address?)
That clip has been played ad nauseam on right-wing mass and social media. But there are other clips from Trump’s speech that will strike an even greater share of the public as appalling, and they don’t involve the vilification of anyone except (by virtue of the indifference to their concerns) the American public. Those clips can prove more toxic to the Republicans if aired both as news and in Democratic ads than Trump’s baiting will be to the Democrats.
I refer, of course, to what Trump said in his speech about how he’d resurrected the American economy, which couldn’t be further from what actually existing Americans experience and therefore believe.
“Our spirit is restored,” he said, “inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the roaring economy is roaring like never before.”
That likely won’t play very well with Americans trying to get a job at a time when hiring has slowed to a trickle.
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Or consider his paean to tariffs, 90 percent of the cost of which is being paid by American consumers:
“One of the primary reasons for our country’s stunning economic turnaround,” he said, “the biggest in history—where the Dow Jones broke 50,000 four years ahead of schedule, and the S&P hit 7,000, where it wasn’t supposed to do it for many years—were tariffs. I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well.”
Actually existing Americans don’t think everything is working well. Nor do they agree with their president’s assessment of the state of their union:
“The state of our union is strong. Our country is winning again. In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we’re winning too much. We can’t take it anymore. We’re not used to winning in our country until you came along, we’re just always losing. But now we’re winning too much.”
There’s little evidence showing that Americans appreciate presidents who are completely detached from actual American lives, much less who double down on policies, like Trump’s tariffs, that make those lives more arduous.
Democrats don’t have to work to vilify Trump. His own words should suffice, and in due appreciation for his contributions to the growing public awareness that he’s clueless, indifferent, or both when it comes to the challenges that real Americans encounter every day, Democrats should gladly flood the media with Trump’s remarks. That could help them to be winning again—if not too much, at least in November.
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