SOTU 2026 Kabuki Theater, Bipartisan Kayfabe
POTUS Donald Trump’s SOTU 2026 was the usual kabuki theater, aimed at scoring cheap partisan zingers
POTUS Donald Trump’s SOTU 2026 was the usual kabuki theater, aimed at scoring cheap partisan zingers while ignoring major issues like the Epstein Files, minimizing a possibly imminent attack on Iran, and misrepresenting last week’s SCOTUS ruling on his tariffs.
The Democratic response by Virginia Governor, and veteran CIA agent, Abigail Spanberger similarly whistled past the graveyard, ignoring a number of major issues where her party is dramatically out of touch with voters.
Both Trump and his Democratic establishment opposition saw news drop yesterday that loomed over their speeches but went unaddressed.
Epstein File Revelations Getting Closer to The Donald Despite Cover Up Attempts
Roughly a dozen hours before SOTUS 2026, NPR pulled on a thread linking Trump directly to the most salacious aspects of the Epstein Files and alleged a Department of Justice coverup:
The Justice Department has withheld some Epstein files related to allegations that President Trump sexually abused a minor, an NPR investigation finds. It also removed some documents from the public database where accusations against Jeffrey Epstein also mention Trump.
Some files have not been made public despite a law mandating their release. These include what appear to be more than 50 pages of FBI interviews, as well as notes from conversations with a woman who accused Trump of sexual abuse decades ago when she was a minor.
Well, that ain’t good.
Possibly even worse, someone at the Pentagon was trying to get the word out to the MSM that Trump’s threatened attack on Iran might not go so well.
What, U.S. Generals Worried?
Nothing takes the wind out of The Donald’s sails like hearing his next fight might not be as easy as Lindsey Graham and Bibi Netanyahu promised.
In the interest of time, space, and easy scanning I’ll just provide meta coverage of this kerfluffle (links to news stories are here):
This was welcome news to those of us with the good sense to fear a conflict that could trigger a global conflagration, but it had to be sheer poison to the Donald’s delicate ears.
So Much Winning, Bigly
And then there’s the polling:
But it wasn’t just the GOP President facing unwelcome news and rumors erupting in advance of the big SOTU 2026 speechifying.
Democratic Kayfabe Called Out
The bipartisan trouble making team of Reps. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Ro Khanna (D-CA) are following up on the Epstein Files legislation they co-sponsored by pushing for a vote on their Iran war powers resolution – a measure that would require every member of Congress to go on the record about a potential U.S. war with Iran.
This is very unwelcome for the Dem leadership because they secretly support Trump’s war on Iran AND cynically hope to politically benefit from any blowback, as Drop Site News reported last week:
The potential for fallout in the event of a regime change war is at the heart of the meek response from Democrats, who see Trump walking into a trap of his own making. The Democratic political calculation was laid bare in an unusually frank conversation last June between a senior foreign policy aide to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and a top official in an organization opposing Iran strikes.
…
A congressional source briefed on the call shortly afterward confirmed the details. The foreign policy aide, whom Drop Site agreed not to name, explained that a substantial number of Senate Democrats believed Iran ultimately needed to be dealt with militarily. But those Democrats, the aide explained, also understood that going to war again in the Middle East would be a political catastrophe. That’s precisely why they wanted Trump to be the one to do it. The hope was that Iran would take a blow and so would Trump—a win-win for Democrats.
Obviously, this is the kind of thing DC swamp-creatures would rather keep their credulous voters ignorant of when making their reply to the POTUS’ SOTU 2026.
Regardless of all that, POTUS had many friends on site, eager to hear him gab.
Everybody’s favorite zionists, the nepobaby who would be king of all media, and DC’s aging closet king eagerly awaited the speech:
Now that we’ve set the scene, let’s get into the speech itself.
Talkin’ Long, Saying Little: Immigration
Trump’s SOTU 2026 set records for length but that’s probably the most notable thing about it.
I’m using the Associated Press SOTU 2026 transcript for the Trump quotes for those who want more.
Trump tried hard to reignite the Culture Wars on immigration but those shots fell flat to my ears.
His most direct blow was this attempt to put the Democrats in a “when did you stop beating your wife?” predicament on immigration:
So tonight, I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration and reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.
Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I’m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens. In many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country. They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself.
This segment bore the finger prints of Herr Reichsmarshall Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller who was quick to celebrate this part of the speech:
The New York Post loved it, too, FWIW.
For those of us who don’t have Triumph of The Will playing on an endless loop, it wasn’t quite as effective.
Perhaps Trump’s attempted immigration bullying missed because of headlines like the following:
Talkin’ Long, Saying Something Very Scary: Elections
Then POTUS Trump turned the SOTU 2026 into a horror movie for a few paragraphs:
(Democrats) don’t want identification for the greatest privilege of them all: voting in America. No, it’s no good, no good. Both Republicans and Democrats overwhelmingly agree on the policy that we just enunciated, and Congress should unite and enact this common sense, country saving legislation right now. And it should be before anything else happens.
And the reason they don’t want to do it, why would anybody not want voter ID? One reason, because they want to cheat. There’s only one reason. They make up all excuses. They say it’s racist. They come up with things. You almost say what imagination they have. They want to cheat, they have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we’re going to stop it. We have to stop it…
I’ll let the shitlib handwringers at Vox.com riff on this one:
Think about that for a second. This is the president of the United States, speaking to the country in a ritualized national address, claiming that the opposition party is not only wrong on policy but fundamentally illegitimate, so much so that if they win an election it must be because they cheated.
Taken literally, that is the president announcing that the stated policy of his administration is preventing the opposition from winning any future election.
We’re all so used to wading through Trump’s sea of hyperbole that it’s easy to push past a bald-faced declaration of authoritarian intent. And to be clear, I don’t think the SAVE Act — or anything else Trump has proposed so far — could actually lock Democrats out of power. There is a real gap between what he is saying and what he is capable of doing.
Trump’s authoritarian intentions have been clear for a long time, but now that his polling is collapsing, ICE has retreated from Minnesota, and the Supreme Court has ruled against tariffs, he seems less able to act on his bad intentions than at any point in his second term.
Talkin’ Long, Saying Little: Tariffs
POTUS also addressed the biggest reversal of his second term: last week’s Supreme Court ruling that overturned some of his tariffs:
just four days ago, an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down, came down. Very unfortunate ruling.
But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made — right, Scott? — knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them, and, therefore, they will continue to work along the same successful path that we had negotiated before the Supreme Court’s unfortunate involvement. So, despite the disappointing ruling, these powerful countries saving, is saving our country the kind of money we’re taking in, peace protecting — many of the wars I’ve settled was because of the threat of tariffs, I wouldn’t have been able to settle them without — will remain in place under fully approved and tested alternative legal statutes. And they have been tested for a long time. They’re a little more complex, but they’re actually probably better — leading to a solution that will be even stronger than before. Congressional action will not be necessary. It’s already time-tested and approved. And as time goes by, I believe the tariffs, paid for by foreign countries, will, like in the past, substantially replace the modern-day system of income tax, taking a great financial burden off the people that I love.
Moving forward, factories, jobs, investment and trillions and trillions of dollars will continue pouring into the United States of America because we finally have a president who puts America first. I put America first. I love America.
Trump’s SOTU remarks were far more temperate than those he made in the immediate aftermath of the SCOTUS ruling. Perhaps because four of the nine were in attendance. Per the NYT:
For days, President Trump has pummeled Supreme Court justices with harsh personal attacks, calling them “disloyal” and “fools” for their ruling against his signature economic initiative to impose sweeping tariffs.
But when the president came face-to-face with a handful of justices who attended his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, the interaction was cordial, subdued even, with Mr. Trump going only so far in calling the ruling “disappointing” and “very unfortunate.”
…
The president’s restraint in his interactions with the justices on Tuesday night suggested that Mr. Trump may be thinking about the court’s continued role in reviewing the lawfulness of his other policies and that he may not want to completely alienate the justices.
Good thinking, there, Donald. Shrewd and savvy.
Talkin’ Long, Saying Little: Affordability
Trump’s SOTU 2026 comments on inflation and affordability were filled with mendacious nonsense, false claims, and lots of blame for Biden:
For decades before I came along, we had the exact opposite. From trade to health care, from energy to immigration, everything was stolen and rigged in order to drain the wealth out of the productive, hardworking people who make our country great, who make our country run. Under Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond, it reached a breaking point with the Green New Scam, open borders for everyone…and record-setting inflation that cost the typical family $34,000 in just a speck of time.
Now, the same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word affordability, a word, they just used it because somebody gave it to them, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure. You caused that problem. You caused that problem. They knew their statements were a lie, they knew it, they knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them. We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting downward. The price of eggs is down 60%, Madam Secretary, thank you. The cost of chicken, butter, fruit, hotels, automobiles, rent is lower today than when I took office by a lot. And even beef, which was very high, is starting to come down significantly. Just hold on a little while. We’ll get that down. And soon you will see numbers that few people would think were possible to achieve just a short time ago.
Nobody can believe when they see the kind of numbers, and especially energy, when they see energy going down to numbers like that, they cannot believe it. It’s like another big tax cut.
A snarky meme is worth a thousand fact checks parsing The Donald’s BS, so here you go:
Talkin’ Long, Saying Little: Health Care
Trump’s SOTU 2026 comments on health care policy did make me prick up my ears:
Since the passage of the “Unaffordable Care Act,” sometimes referred to as Obamacare, big insurance companies have gotten rich. It was meant for the insurance companies, not for the people. With our government giving them hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars a year, as their stock prices soared 1,000, 1,200, 1,400 and even 1,700%, like nothing else. That’s why I introduced the great health care plan. I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people, so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost. In addition, my plan requires maximum price transparency. That’s a big deal. Sounds so simple, so big. And I did that in my first term and the Democrats immediately terminated it, with the full knowledge that they were doing a very bad thing for the people. Costs were going to go way up and that’s what happened, and now I’m bringing them way down on health care and everything else.
I’m also ending the wildly inflated cost of prescription drugs like has never happened before. Other presidents tried to do it, but they never could. They tried, most didn’t try, actually, but they tried, they said they tried. They couldn’t do it. They didn’t even come close. They were all talk and no action. But I got it done, under my just-enacted most-favored nation agreements, Americans who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs, anywhere, the lowest price.
So, in my first year of my second term — should be my third term, but strange things happen — I took prescription drugs. a very big part of health care, from the highest price in the entire world to the lowest. That’s a big achievement. The result is price differences of 300, 400, 500, 600% and more, all available right now at a new website called trumprx.gov — and I didn’t name that one, either, by the way.
…
So now I’m calling on Congress to codify my most-favored nation program into law. Now, the one thing I’m not sure it matters, because it’s going to be very hard for somebody that comes along after me to say, let’s raise drug prices by 700 or 800%.
Since I don’t follow health care policy closely, I will share the NYT’s fact check on Trump’s claims on this topic:
Mr. Trump has proposed redirecting insurance subsidies to individual health savings accounts, which people could use to purchase health care services directly, as a way to compensate for rising premiums following the expiration of certain tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. But his proposal does not offer specifics.
In recent months, congressional Republicans have offered variations of this idea, but their proposals differ from one another, and there is no evidence that people paying directly for care would directly lower prices.
An analysis by KFF, a nonprofit that conducts polling and research about health policy, concluded: “The president’s plan is vague, and without knowing more, it is impossible to say what the implications would be for people with pre-existing conditions who rely on the A.C.A. markets.”
But let’s get to the topic that’s had me losing sleep: MOAR WARZ.
Talkin’ Long, Saying Little: Iran
It took ninety minutes, but he finally addressed the elephant in the room (although the looming ghost of Jeffrey Epstein was ignored) with three minutes of empty blather about Iran:
As president, I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever we must. That’s why in a breakthrough operation last June, the United States military obliterated Iran’s nuclear weapons program with an attack on Iranian soil known as Operation Midnight Hammer. For decades, it has been the policy of the United States never to allow Iran to obtain a nuclear weapon. Many decades. Since they seized control of that proud nation 47 years ago, the regime and its murderous proxies have spread nothing but terrorism and death and hate. They’ve killed and maimed thousands of American service members and hundreds of thousands and even millions of people. With what’s called roadside bombs. They were the kings of the roadside bomb. And we took out Soleimani. I did that during my first term. Had a huge impact. He was the father of the roadside bomb. And just over the last couple of months with the protests, they’ve killed at least, it looks like, 32,000 protesters — 32,000 protesters in their own country. They shot them and hung them. We stopped them from hanging a lot of them with the threat of serious violence.
But this is some terrible people. They’ve already developed missiles that can threaten Europe and our bases overseas, and they’re working to build missiles that will soon reach the United States of America. After Midnight Hammer, they were warned to make no future attempts to rebuild their weapons program, and in particular nuclear weapons, yet they continue. They’re starting it all over. We wiped it out and they want to start it all over again and are at this moment again pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words, “We will never have a nuclear weapon.” My preference, my preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world’s No. 1 sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can’t let that happen.
Jon Stewart had the best response I saw:
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Background on Gov. Spanberger
Ex-CIA agent and current Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger gave the official response.
For those unfamiliar with Spanberger, here’s how I summed up her congressional career during the Governor’s race last year:
In Congress, Spanberger belonged to both the “pro business” New Democrat Coalition and the bipartisan Problem Solvers Caucus.
First elected to Congress in 2018, she was all-in on efforts to impeach Trump for allegedly attempting to strongarm Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy into investigating the Bidens.
In the heady days of 2019, she briefly supported legislation for a $15/hour minimum wage, but her flirtation with progressive policy was limited.
She opposed some of the pandemic stimulus and pushed back against Biden’s attempts at economic populism.
Her 2020 re-election bid got a lot of love from The Washington Post:
Spanberger, who spent much of her career with a gun on her hip, supported a bill to expand background checks and another to allow law enforcement to temporarily seize guns from people who pose an imminent threat to themselves or others, commonly known as a “red flag” law.
Spanberger responded to Democrats’ disappointing Congressional results in the 2020 election by saying, “We have to commit to not saying the words “defund the police” ever again,” she said. “We have to not use the words ‘socialist’ or ‘socialism’ ever again.”
Interestingly, Spanberger had opposed Trump’s response to the 2020 George Floyd protests from a national security angle tweeting that “as a former CIA officer” she “recognized this playbook,” joining other CIA vets who “expressed dismay at the similarity between events at home and the signs of decline or democratic regression they were trained to detect in other nations.”
National security scolding, good. Socialism, bad.
Max Blumenthal also had some informative background on Spanberger:
Now let’s take a quick look at what she had to say last night.
Talkin’ Back, Saying Little
Baltimore TV had the full transcript.
Her theme was ‘Is the President working for you?’:
…let me ask you three questions:
Is the President working to make life more affordable for you and your family?
Is the President working to keep Americans safe — both at home and abroad?
Is the President working for YOU?
…even though the Supreme Court struck these tariffs down four days ago, the damage to us, the American people, has already been done.
Meanwhile, the President is planning for new tariffs. Another massive tax hike on you and your family.
Republicans in Congress? They remain unwilling to assert their constitutional authority to stop him.
They’re making your life harder. They’re making your life more expensive. They’re even making it more difficult to see a doctor.
The meat of her speech was in her wheelhouse, “security”:
I grew up in a house of service. My mother was a nurse and my father was a career law enforcement officer. I began my career by following in my father’s footsteps as a federal agent working money laundering and narcotics cases. I worked side by side with local and state police to keep our communities safe and to uphold and enforce the law.
Law enforcement officers across the country know that it’s a unique responsibility to do the serious work of investigating crimes, comforting victims, and making arrests. It’s about building trust, and that requires an abiding sense of duty and commitment to community.
And yet, our President has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans — and they have done it without a warrant.
They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies, they have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens on our streets.
And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability.
Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children, or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.
Our President told us tonight that we are safer because these agents arrest mothers and detain children. Think about that.
Our broken immigration system is something to be fixed — not an excuse for unaccountable agents to terrorize our communities.
After working in law enforcement, I continued my career of service as a CIA officer, working undercover to protect the United States and our allies from global threats: terrorism, nuclear weapons, and the aggression of adversarial nations around the globe.
But as the President spoke of his perceived successes tonight, he continues to cede economic power and technological strength to China, bow down to a Russian dictator, and make plans for war with Iran.
Here’s the truth: over the last year, through DOGE, mass firings, and the appointment of deeply unserious people to our nation’s most serious positions, our President has endangered the long and storied history of the United States of America being a force for good.
NYU scholar Corey Robin has a nice critique of Spanberger’s bloated prose.
An excerpt:
Spanberger: “As I campaigned for Governor last year, I traveled to every corner of Virginia, and I heard the same pressing concern everywhere: costs are too high. In housing, healthcare, energy, and childcare. And I know these same conversations are being had all across this country.”
Corey Robin: This is the equivalent of a student writing in their paper, “As I began thinking about the essay topic last night, I…” No one cares about your process, about how you came to write what you’re going to write, or say what you’re about to say. Just say it. No voter gives a shit that you traveled to every corner of Virginia, particularly when you’re “campaigning” for governor. And if the point is that what the governor hears in every corner of Virginia is what we’re all hearing everywhere, why not just dispense with all the nonsense about your travels? And how about some specificity while we’re at it. What’s with “energy” and “housing” and all these other words that sound like they come from the Harvard Kennedy School.
…
Like, why is this so fucking hard? I’m supposed to be a pointy-headed over-educated professor whose head in the clouds. Yet I could write a better speech in my sleep. And for a lot less money than I’m sure this bozo paid her bozo speechwriters.
If you find yourselves feeling stuck between Scylla and Charybdis, or between a sunsetting dumb as rocks bully and a hard girlboss place, you’re not alone.