As insane as it was, as you may have guessed, we’re talking about Tuesday’s night State of the Union Address on today’s BradCast. But I can say with confidence that today’s show is nowhere near as long or insane or angry or boring as that crazy speech last night! [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
As you also may have guessed, we are joined today by our go-to roundtable of progressive old-school bloggers, award-winning Salon columnist and Hullabaloo blogger HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, and co-host of The Professional Left Podcast, the one and only ‘DRIFTGLASS’. They are with us for the full hour.
I’m not sure how much I need to tee things up for today’s program, especially if you saw what happened last night. If you didn’t, we’ll give you a good summary at the top of the show, and you won’t have to listen to more than a minute or two of Donald Trump‘s voice thereafter. (You’re welcome).
It was, as explained, an angry, racist, ugly, hate-filled State of the Union Address that, at a record length, included astonishingly little of substance and even less that resembled truth or reality. By now, we’ve come to except no less from a 34-time convicted felon, adjudicate sex abuser and accused rapist of at least one 13-year old girl.
He called Somali Americans living in Minneapolis “pirates”; he called the Mayor of the nation’s largest city a “Communist”; he repeatedly called Democrats “crazy” and “sick” and charged they, not he, were “destroying our country”. But the most offensive point, at least to me, was likely when he described voting in America as a “privilege”, as opposed to what it is: a right for every citizen and one that must be protected. From him.
As also noted, the most important news of Tuesday night may have been the fact that three more Democrats swept Special Elections for state Legislatures in Pennsylvania and Maine yesterday. In PA, in particularly, it was a route, with one candidate winning by 63 points, the other by 35 points. That amounted to two more huge over-performances by Dems, as compared to Kamala Harris’ numbers in the same district in 2024. On Tuesday, the swing toward Democrats was by 34 and 17 points respectively, as this year’s critical midterm elections are now just 250 days away, with primary voting already underway in several states.
So ddid Trump say anything of importance on Tuesday night? Does any of it really matter? Does the SOTU itself even matter at this point?
Digby doesn’t seem to think so. It was “a reality show, a wrestling match, a game show,” she argues. “Virtually everything he said was a lie. It was insane. The fact checkers looked like they’d been hit over the head by a 2-by-4.”
“This was a spectacle,” charges Driftglass. “But it was something out of Imperial Rome. Trump slowed down and reveled in all these gory images of blood and violence. This was ancient, ugly, awful, fascist stuff. This was blood and country and revenge.”
Beyond that, we actually had quite a few laughs on today’s program, even though we also had to wade through some pretty dark topics, including the news of Trump’s DOJ attempting (though now failing?) to hide very serious allegations in the Epstein Files of Trump having raped and assaulted a 13-year old girl.
We also discuss the Democrats response to the speech in the chamber (which seemed to infuriate Trump as his marathon remarks went on…and on) and in Virginia, where, both Digby and Driftglass seem to agree, freshly minted Gov. Abigail Spanberger delivered a very well-considered response on behalf of the party.
“He’s bad at fascism, bad at governing, but he’s really good at chaos,” quips Digby today, as we try to make sense of at least some of that chaos. Wish us luck, and tune in for much, much more…
Well said.