Nancy Mace, in the most Nancy Mace move imaginable, attempts to lean over the railing to hug Donald Trump. He demurs, so she kisses him on the forehead.
When President Donald Trump walked into the chamber, Democratic Rep. Melanie Stansbury stood up and held up a sign protesting his speech. Was tough to read from far away, but I believe it said “This is not normal.” The stunt didn’t last for long — someone quickly snatched the sign out of her hands and threw it up in the air.
A Republican just swiped a “This is Not Normal” sign from one of the Democrats as Trump proceeded down the aisle.
I’ve been listening to the CNN commentary beforehand. Both Alyssa Griffin and Scott Jennings in different ways are making the point that Democrats are positioning themselves all wrong with respect to DOGE: speaking as though every federal job is sacrosanct, every layoff a crime, and the whole effort (as the cliché goes) a chainsaw when a scalpel is called for. There are criticisms to be made of DOGE–I am still skeptical that it is going to lead to either a serious downsizing of the federal government or improvement in its functioning–but the ones to which the Democrats gravitate are not compelling.
On Fox News, Larry Kudlow says pre-speech that he thinks Trump should have focused on extending the TCJA first before considering tariffs. “In the first term, the tax cuts came first, then the tariffs came, and I wish the sequence was the same this time around,” he said.
Per Jeff’s point, I had to abandon the PBS stream due to its entirely oppositional character.
Trump’s Labor Secretary pick Lori Chavez-DeRemer is on the right side of the chamber right now hugging and taking pictures with her former House colleagues ahead of tonight’s speech.
I have the misfortune to be listening to ABC News’s livestream for tonight’s speech and, as a guy who writes about media bias all the time at NR, even I’m authentically surprised by the open partisanship of the commentary. Every single pre-game comment is negative.
In some ways, the stakes for this speech are lower than many think; Trump knows he will speak to an audience divided into a boisterous cheering section and a hissingly angry opposition party, which means he’s in his theatrical “professional wrestling” milieu. It matters what international actors and investors perceive with regard to developments with NATO and tariff policy.
Checking the polls as we wait for the speech: RCP has Trump still in positive territory but getting closer to zero. It also has Americans thinking the country is still going in the wrong direction by nearly ten points — but those numbers have been getting better.