Littwin: Trump’s speech was another in a series of homages to, of course, Trump. Only worse.

It was the longest presidential address to Congress — I had this fact-checked  — since at least the invention of time.

And it was the most contentious presidential address — both sides contributing here, by the way, but with Donald Trump smirkingly leading the way — since Abe Lincoln was in town, reflecting the measure of the crises facing our country in just the first six weeks of the Trump Restoration.

And — again this is fact-checked —  it was the first presidential address by anyone that included the lie that Aurora (and Springfield, Ohio) had “buckled under the weight of the migrant occupation and corruption like nobody has ever seen.” The truth, of course, is that there’s no migrant occupation in Aurora, although you wouldn’t necessarily know that if you watched the occasional Aurora City Council member in action.

Trump  bragged — of course he bragged — about his record-setting pace of executive orders, but spent no time on the many lawsuits filed against the orders. In the latest ruling on Wednesday morning, a 5-4 Supreme Court majority denied Trump’s request to continue freezing, by executive order, $2 billion in foreign aid. The question here is whether Trump will defy the courts.

He praised Elon Musk and his Washington DOGE team for the extended rampage through government agencies, saying “the days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.” This got a laugh from some Democrats who might have noted that Musk is the ultimate example of rule by an unelected plutocrat, who fires Black men and any kind of woman by claiming that, since they’re Black and/or women, they must be DEI hires. Cheers from the crowd for racism.

He buddied up to Vladimir Putin, of course, while slapping tariffs on both friends and enemies — the list changing every day, it seems — no matter the cost. Because Trump’s endgame — or one of them — is burning down democracy in favor of autocracy. Cheers from the crowd again.

It’s hard to find one defining moment in the night. But Frank Bruni of the New York Times came up with this: “Everything in Trump’s world is extreme, absolute, unnuanced, superlative. Worst ever. Best ever. ‘Like nothing that has ever been seen before.’ Over and over. It’s juvenile. It’s narcissistic. It’s exhausting — like his speech, which made Sunday night’s Oscars seem succinct.”

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But if the speech was long, at least Trump spent his time doing what he does best — glorifying himself (calling his first six weeks “the most successful in the history of the nation. And what makes it even more impressive is, do you know who No. 2 is? George Washington. How about that?”).

And of course taunting his enemies (Joe Biden the “worst president in history,” Elizabeth Warren “Pocahontas”), continuing to make America imperialist again (claiming he was in the process of “reclaiming” the Panama Canal — while lying about the number of American lives lost in its construction — and vowing to “get” Greenland “one way or the other”). He also taunted Canada President Justin Trudeau, calling him “Governor Trudeau”). 

Meanwhile he praised the dangerous RFK Jr. (who is addressing measles outbreaks with Vitamin A and cod liver oil and failing to mention — even though the HHS is supplying them — the need for vaccines) for his debunked lies about autism. Also uber-praised the even more dangerous Musk (the list of Musk’s offenses against the federal government and its workers is so long, we have to use blitzkrieg for shorthand).

And on and on and on. 

He attacked USAID with a series of easily fact-checkable mistakes, or, I don’t know, lies. He got his facts wrong on a Sesame Street-like show in the Middle East. On a supposed DEI grant to Burma. He said no one had ever heard of Lesotho, which, to be fair, he never once called a “shithole country” because, I guess, he never heard of it. But he did namecheck Uganda and Moldova.

He lied about the number of dead people on the IRS rolls collecting Social Security. It was enough to make people start to worry again about what plans Trump has in mind for Social Security and Medicare. We know he plans to strip billions from Medicaid, so he can renew his tax cuts for the wealthy. Are the old people — you know, like me — safe?

He calls for the death penalty for anyone who murders a police officer. He doesn’t mention — or probably even notice — the irony that he had pardoned all those January 6 rioters who violently assaulted police officers.

And on and on and on.

In the New Yorker, Susan Glasser called it Trump’s “golden age of bunk.” Which, though accurate, is the nice way to put it, and being nice was definitely not a theme of Trump’s speech. Which is how he came to say that Democrats in the hall would never cheer for him, even if he invented a cure for cancer — but that’s maybe because he called them “radical left lunatics” or, more likely, because there’s so little to cheer about, although his Republican enablers didn’t seem to notice.

As Democrats tried different ways to protest, they never quite got it right. A defiant Rep. Al Green, D-Texas, was ordered by Speaker Mike Johnson to leave the room for defiantly bad behavior, which seemed strange since the egregious Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene, in all their years of State of the Union heckling, have never been tossed.

Some of the signs Democrats held up were funny, but that was about it. Why not a group walkout when Green was tossed or maybe immediately after one of Trump’s more disgusting lies? Why not do something — anything — that people would be talking about the next day?

All I know is that we’re still waiting for Dems to meet the moment and for the nascent budding grassroots to sprout into a movement.

Trump did have his moments. Just days after trying to humiliate Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Trump had some kinder words for the Ukrainian leader, whose war-torn country Trump threatens to abandon in favor of Russia. That left Zelenskyy with no choice but to say kind words about Trump, which is the only way to get him to say kind words about you.

When Trump talked about tariffs — which he calls the “most beautiful word” in the English language, which now, by executive order, is the official language of the United States, just as the Gulf of Mexico is now, in Trump’s mind at least, the Gulf of America — he sort of conceded that there would be pain involved for actual people. 

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again and it’s happening and it will be happening rather quickly,” Trump said. “There will be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”

Are we really OK with that? Reports say that Coloradans alone would take the hit for $1.4 billion. That’s much.

For farmers, many of them worried muchly about tariffs, Trump advised they should have “fun,” which is the exact word I often come to when I think about farming. 

And Trump is already backing down — announcing a monthlong pause on tariffs for cars coming from Canada and Mexico because of protests from, just counting here, Canada, Mexico and a bunch of American automakers, who don’t seem to be having fun.

Trump also did his I-have-a-heart shtick — and I think it is shtick — when he told heartwarming stories about handpicked people in the audience. He did it pretty well, too.

But aside from amusing himself and his enablers in the room with his nasty, just-short-of-forever speech that will be little noted nor long remembered, that was about all he did well.

Except for maybe this: The speech offered a warning — and one that must be heeded — that he’s just getting started on his wrecking-American-democracy campaign. And if you think you know how bad it will get, you’re kidding yourself.

Consider this: Do you know anyone who, six weeks ago, thought the start of Trump’s second term could possibly have gone this bad, this fast?

Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.

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