On Tuesday night President Donald Trump told the country, cheering Republicans and bitter Democrats that “America is back.” Trump is back. Optimism is back. Confidence in the future is back. The president delivered a tour de force speech that outlined and celebrated just how far he has moved the country from the precipice of disaster, from sealing the border and virtually ending illegal immigration to uprooting corruption and waste in a federal government that has always continued to grow despite promises to reduce its invasive power. Trump quipped that America didn't need new laws to stop the invasion at the southern border -- just "a new president."
It wasn’t technically a State of the Union address from Trump but an address to a joint session of Congress – a tradition launched by President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in an inauguration year. But it was so nice to watch a president stand with strength and confidence before that Congress and instead of having to ask “How long can he last,” we could wonder “How long will he go?”
Trump made the most of an evening that began with raucous Democrats jeering, booing and insulting the president from the floor of the chamber. But when House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) threatened to have the sergeant-at-arms physically remove anyone causing a disturbance and actually did have Rep. Al Green (D-TX) escorted out of the room, the Democrats quieted down and resorted to waving placards that read “Lies," "No king" or "Musk steals" and other such scribblings. Frankly, the display looked beyond ridiculous and desended into the realm of self-parody.
Trump didn’t announce that the US would be leaving NATO as some had speculated but he did read a letter from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky who was desperate to restore goodwill with the Trump administration and the billions of aid he sucks out of America after Trump paused the payments this week after a disgraceful performance from the Ukrainian dictator during a Friday news conference in the Oval Office. In the correspondence, Zelensky even waved those rare earth minerals in front of Trump, hoping that would open a bank that has dispensed hundreds of billions of dollars to keep the war with Russia grinding on.
Throughout a speech of over 90 minutes in duration, Democrats could muster little applause and refused to rise from their seats even as Trump introduced the mother and sister of “a brilliant 22-year-old nursing student named Laken Riley,” who is perhaps the best remembered victim of former President Joe Biden’s open border policy that allowed criminal aliens to stay in the country and kill American citizens.
Trump recalled how Riley “went out for a jog on the campus of the University of Georgia. That morning, Laken was viciously attacked, assaulted, beaten, brutalized and horrifically murdered.” There was no response from the Democrats.
Trump began his dissertation by reminding Americans that he has only been president for less than 50 days but that “it has been nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country. We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four years or eight years — and we are just getting started. Thank you.”
“I return to this chamber tonight to report that America’s momentum is back. Our spirit is back. Our pride is back. Our confidence is back. And the American dream is surging — bigger and better than ever before. The American dream is unstoppable, and our country is on the verge of a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed, and perhaps will never witness again. Never been anything like it.”
In terms of executive and legislative action, the Trump administration is easily the busiest presidency since Franklin Roosevelt introduced the New Deal over 90 years ago. And Trump reminded his audience of how he “is fighting to deliver the change America needs to bring a future that America deserves, and we’re doing it. This is a time for big dreams and bold action. Upon taking office, I imposed an immediate freeze on all federal hiring, a freeze on all new federal regulations and a freeze on all foreign aid.”
He recounted the end of the “green new scam” and the withdrawals from the Paris climate accordI withdrew from the unfair Paris climate accord and the World Health Organization. How he ended Biden’s “insane electric vehicle mandate” that he noted will save “our auto workers and companies from economic destruction.”
Trump reminded us that he has ended “the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government. And indeed the private sector and our military.”
“Our country will be woke no longer,” he declared, as he then proceeded to tear into the Critical Race Theory indoctrination that he has removed from the public school system.
But in what might have been the seminal moment of the speech, Trump declared something that many world leaders would dare not utter even though a majority of their citizens would love to hear it.
“I signed an order making it the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders: male and female. I also signed an executive order to ban men from playing in women’s sports,” Trump said.
“I also signed an order to cut off all taxpayer funding to any institution that engages in the sexual mutilation of our youth. Now I want Congress to pass a bill permanently banning and criminalizing sex changes on children and forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body. This is a big lie. And our message to every child in America is that you are perfect exactly the way God made you.”
Wow. Would you hear that from the prime minister of Canada or the president of France?
And even as Trump announced that he had just renamed a wildlife preserve near Houston to honor another victim of illegal immigration – Jocelyn Nungaray – or brought Secret Service Director Sean Curran into the audience to officially designate a 13-year-old black youth as an agent, the Democrats barely noted the magnitude of the events and continued to sit on their backsides, revealing a depth of complacency for the wrongs they had facilitated and a contempt for the solutions being offered that was truly astounding in its depth and delusion. Does this tottering party still hate Trump as much as it did when it tried to impeach him twice during his first presidency? Oh yes, and perhaps more.
Trump also heralded the achievements of the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) as it continues to expose the rampant waste of government money and abuse of federal powers. As he listed the hundreds of millions of dollars that would no longer be spent on projects that have nothing to do with US security, American edification or even basic common sense, the Democrats signaled their disapproval by sitting in silence or heckling.
As he neared the end of his speech, he remembered the first assassination attempt on his life in Pennsylvania and eulogized those killed or wounded in the attack. The event was clearly a monumental moment in the president’s life as he revealed what that day had taught him: “I believe that my life was saved that day in Butler for a very good reason. I was saved by God to Make America Great Again — I believe that. I do. Thank you. Thank you very much.”
And how does he intend to keep making America great again? He told Americans that they were seeing it in his administration’s work but even more had witnessed the power of transformation from the guests he had introduced to the country.
“And as we have seen in this chamber tonight, that same strength, faith, love and spirit is still alive and thriving in the hearts of the American people. Despite the best efforts of those who would try to censor us, silence us, break us, destroy us, Americans are today a proud, free, sovereign and independent nation. That will always be free, and we will fight for it till death. We will never let anything happen to our beloved country. Because we are a country of doers, dreamers, fighters, survivors. Our ancestors crossed a vast ocean, strode into an unknown wilderness and carved their fortunes from the rock and soil of a perilous and very dangerous frontier.”
Trump is not ashamed of American history nor the legacy of freedom that it contains. He will not apologize for American greatness but demands that we celebrate it and remember how the people who built the United States
“chased our destiny across a boundless continent. They built the railroads, laid the highways and graced the world with American marvels like the Empire State Building, the mighty Hoover Dam, and the towering Golden Gate Bridge. They lit the world with electricity, broke free of the force of gravity, fired up the engines of American industry, vanquished the communists, fascists and Marxists all over the world, and gave us countless modern wonders sculpted out of iron, glass, and steel.”
Then, the invitation to join the fight “to take up the righteous cause of American liberty. And it’s our turn to take America’s destiny into our own hands and begin the most thrilling days in the history of our country. This will be our greatest era; with God’s help over the next four years, we are going to lead this nation even higher, and we are going to forge the freest, most advanced, most dynamic and most dominant civilization ever to exist on the face of this Earth,” Trump said.
A promise that can be fulfilled or just an optimistic pledge? Trump can make you believe the impossible is possible again.
“My fellow Americans, get ready for an incredible future because the golden age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before. Thank you, God bless you, and God bless America.”
Perhaps we have not thought of America in such inspiring sunlit terms since Ronald Reagan talked about that shining “city on a hill.”
We have reason to believe again.
