Trump offers Americans thin gruel as he turns longest-ever State of the Union into awards show

With 251 days remaining until voters decide whether to let his party keep control of Congress, President Donald Trump used the primetime stage afforded to him by his annual State of the Union address to dole out surprise medals and repeat familiar boasts of a new American “golden age” — all while mocking the affordability concerns that have caused his approval ratings to plummet in recent months.

Opening what became the longest-ever address to Congress by a president by claiming that the country is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before” after his first year back in the White House, Trump bragged of having achieved “a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages” as he claimed to have solved all of the problems that led voters to return him to power.

“Inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast, the economy is roaring like never before,” he said as Republicans in the House and Senate dutifully applauded his boasts about gasoline prices, mortgage rates, and a claimed $18 trillion in foreign investment into the U.S. since his inauguration last January.

And with members of the Supreme Court looking on, he pledged to keep imposing the import taxes — which economists estimate have cost American families at least $1,700 each since last year — while attacking the court for a “disappointing ruling” that found he could not impose tariffs by invoking the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act, because the Carter-era law didn’t explicitly give him the authority to impose import taxes for any reason.

As he did so, Trump repeated his oft-told lie about the tariffs, which are ultimately taxes paid by Americans: that foreign countries are paying them. He even went so far as to claim his tariff policies, which the court declared illegal last week, could “substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax.”

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At the same time, he mocked Democrats for their focus on “affordability” by calling the term “a word they just used” that “somebody” had “given to them” while blaming the opposition for having “created the high prices” that persist a year into his second term.

Trump’s appearance in the House chamber — his fourth formal State of the Union — was different to the bombastic, hour-and-40-minute address he delivered to an amped-up Republican-controlled Congress roughly six weeks into his second term. Then, the newly installed 47th president was riding high off momentum created by the shock-and-awe assault on the federal government, helped by Elon Musk’s new Department of Government Efficiency, and enjoying some of his highest approval ratings.

Democrats, still reeling from the November 2024 electoral defeat and pointing fingers over who was to blame for enabling the president’s return to power, either sat silently or made unflattering spectacles by waving signs to react to Trump’s remarks; Texas Rep. Al Green tried to shout Trump down, leading to his ejection from the chamber.

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This year, a significant number of Democrats chose to boycott Trump’s address by attending alternative events, including a “People’s State of the Union” put on by the liberal group MoveOn.

Green did not boycott the president’s speech this year. Instead, he returned and was quickly removed by the House Sergeant-at-Arms after holding up a sign saying “Black People Aren’t Apes” – an apparent response to Trump’s posting of a video containing a racist AI depiction of the Obamas. Signage is banned under House rules.

In this speech, which at just under one hour and 48 minutes broke his own previous record for the longest-ever address to a joint session of Congress, he largely stuck to familiar rhetorical territory — red meat for his political base.

He described crimes committed against white Americans by non-white people and immigrants in gratuitously graphic terms, while attempting to create fodder for future GOP attack ads by asking Democrats to stand in support of anti-immigrant policy proposals and restrictive voting laws meant to make it harder for Democratic-leaning constituencies to cast ballots in this year’s midterm elections.

But he also turned his annual address into a televised spectacle by handing out some of the country’s highest honors to sympathetic recipients whom he’d invited to be present in the House of Representatives gallery.

After railing against the supposed “open border” policies of the opposition party, he asked a West Virginia National Guard general to award the Order of the Purple Heart — a military decoration given to service members who are wounded in combat — to a West Virginia National Guard soldier who was shot in Washington, D.C., earlier this year and to the family of a second soldier who was killed in the same attack.

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Trump also said he’d be awarding the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, to U.S. men’s Olympic hockey goaltender Connor Hellebuyck, fresh off his gold medal performance Sunday in the Winter Olympics, after Hellebuyck and most of his teammates marched into the House’s press gallery to be recognized.

The president continued handing out awards during his remarks, having military brass present more medals to people in the House gallery.

One award, the Legion of Merit, went to a Coast Guard swimmer named Scott Ruskin who saved lives during floods in Texas last year.

Two others were awarded the Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest military decoration, for “conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty: Army Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, was honored for piloting a Chinook helicopter during the recent mission to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro; retired U.S. Navy Captain Royce Williams received his for his combat service during the Second World War and the Korean War, though the specific incident for which he was being decorated wasn’t immediately clear.

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At one point, Trump even lamented his own desire for a Congressional Medal of Honor — the highest award bestowed on the military for service and heroism — even though he never served and received five deferments from service during the Vietnam War.

While Trump baked in the reflected glory of American heroes, his marathon remarks offered little to salvage his diminished political standing with all but his most loyal supporters.

Recent polling results show voters have significant doubts about his priorities and increasingly are questioning whether Trump’s policy initiatives are helping solve the problems he was re-elected to tackle.

One survey from CNN and SSRS released Monday found that a supermajority of Americans — 61 percent — say his policies will send the country in the wrong direction, while only 36 percent approve of his performance. That’s a 12-point drop from the 48 percent approval rating Trump enjoyed when he last addressed Congress.

What’s more, the Independent voters who broke in large numbers for him and Vice President JD Vance in 2024 have abandoned Trump in droves, with 26 percent indicating approval of his performance.

It’s even worse among Latino voters: last year, 41 percent of Latinos approved of the president’s job performance; now, only 22 percent say they do.

And on what was once one of his strongest issues, the economy, 57 percent of Americans say they disapprove of Trump; in a separate ABC News/Washington Post poll on inflation and tariffs, that’s even higher, at 65 and 64 percent respectively.

Trump’s support has cratered on immigration also, with 58 percent of Americans saying they now disapprove of his work on that issue after masked federal agents shot and killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota during a surge in operations there.

He also addressed a House chamber filled with living reminders of the nagging scandal that has plagued his administration for months — survivors of sexual abuse at the hands of his late friend, the deceased pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.

At least 14 survivors of Epstein’s lengthy career of child sex trafficking and rape were present as guests of Democratic House and Senate members, brought there to highlight what the survivors and Democrats allege to be a continuing cover-up of Epstein’s crimes by a Justice Department intent on shielding Trump and his allies from any accountability for their associations with the late criminal.

But Trump didn’t once mention Epstein — whose Department of Justice files he had campaigned on making public if elected — during his nearly two hours of speaking. Meanwhile, his paltry mentions of the economy would have done little to please the Americans who responded to a CBS News poll by stating that they wanted him to speak about his plans to address the very thing he mocked — “affordability.”

Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Minority Leader, savaged Trump in a statement, accusing him of having “blamed others for his failures” rather than “presenting the nation with a positive vision for our future and the economy.”

“For nearly two hours tonight, Donald Trump spewed lies, propaganda and hatred,” the New York Democrat said.

“Democrats know that everyday Americans deserve better, and we will continue to use every tool at our disposal to address the Republican affordability crisis, fix our broken healthcare system and get ICE under control.”