Ben Curtis/AP Photo
Donald Trump speaks at a joint session of Congress on March 4, 2025.
In the decades following the Civil War, one way that Northern Republicans and Southern Democrats both campaigned for election was not by looking forward to what needed to be done, but by calling on voters to honor the sacrifice of the Northern (in the North) or the Southern (in the South) soldiers killed in the late war by voting for the Republicans (in the North) or the Democrats (in the South). In essence, they sought votes by encouraging voters to emotionally refight the Civil War. The pejorative description of this strategy was “waving the bloody shirt.”
What America is going through today has been termed a “cold civil war,” and Donald Trump certainly validated that perception last night with a 99-minute display of waving the bloody shirt before a joint session of Congress. He almost completely blew off the “what needs to be done” legislative agenda that presidents customarily put before Congress. He barely touched on the economic concerns that led to his victory last November, mentioning little except more drill-baby-drilling as the way he’d reduce energy prices (even though his on-again, off-again tariffs on Canadian oil and gas will cause energy prices to rise). His most specific discussion of the economy was to warn farmers that the retaliatory tariffs imposed by trading partners earlier in the day might harm them, but, he hoped, only temporarily.
That was what he was obliged to say. The subject he warmed to was waving the bloody shirt in the cultural civil war that he and the Republicans have been waging ever since the breakup of the Soviet Union compelled them to find a new enemy to run against, even if they had to move heaven and earth to magnify the danger posed by their domestic opponents.
Gloating over his frenetic culture-canceling since he’s taken office, Trump pronounced: “Woke is gone.”
Well, not if he has anything to say about it. If his speech demonstrated anything, it’s that he’s determined to keep woke in all its variations—suspicions of woke, things that might be woke, things that can be attacked as woke—very much alive. Because without his war on woke, his speech would have lasted 15 minutes, not the hour and 39 minutes he unspooled last night.
Other than himself, the individual who figured most prominently in his speech was Joe Biden, whom Trump appears determined to keep at the party as the Great National Wokester, a Banquo’s ghost whose attendance he requires so he can remind his MAGA faithful again and again how he slew him. In his telling, last year’s election was Gettysburg in our cultural civil war, and nothing becomes him more than waving that bloody shirt.
Other than himself, the individual who figured most prominently in his speech was Joe Biden, whom Trump appears determined to keep at the party as the Great National Wokester.
If Trump had been returned to office by a MAGA majority, this might be sound strategy. But only roughly half of the voters who opted to go for Trump last year were MAGAnauts, soldiers in the cold civil war who can’t get enough of owning the libs and who loved his waving the shift drenched in liberals’ blood. The other half, the half whose votes made Trump victorious, did so because they’d lost confidence in Biden and his vice president to fix an economy where the cost of living was rising.
For those voters, Trump had virtually nothing to say last night, nothing on offer, save that the tariffs might discomfort them for a while. His speech was exceptional not only for its length, but for its backward-looking nature. Biden popped up more than once as the cause of all the current economic woes. Will Trump be resurrecting and blaming Biden in his next three yearly addresses to Congress? I suspect he will; after all, it’s what Ronald Reagan did with Jimmy Carter. And if Trump tires of Biden, there’s always Hillary.
As for the Democrats in the room, they probably shouldn’t have shown up at all. Their role was that of sitting ducks for Trump’s wild attacks, and those who weren’t sitting, like the superannuated Rep. Al Green (D-TX), didn’t do their cause any favors by standing up and shouting, though at least he showed a little fight. The small placards Democrats wielded as a mute reply to Trump during the speech were very much bringing a knife to a gunfight.
On the other hand, the Democratic response, delivered by newly elected Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, actually hit all the right notes. Slotkin pointed out that Trump has no economic program except to cut taxes on the rich and possibly endanger the health care access of tens of millions of Americans. She argued that his failure to appreciate the indispensability of democracy to human life betrays our defining national values (even if we’ve often failed to live up to them). Those values, she noted, were once shared (if unevenly) across party lines, name-checking even Reagan, who, she added, would surely have been as appalled at Trump’s bullying of Ukrainian President Zelensky and the Ukrainian people as both European and American democrats have been.
Slotkin’s response was pretty much just what the Democrats needed, though I think she might have played up the Republicans’ plutocratic tilt a little more. As for Trump, it’s clear he can’t let Biden and the wokesters of yesteryear go. He needs them desperately. Otherwise, what would he and his fellow Republicans have to talk about?
