Within the first main speech to Congress of his second time period, President Donald Trump made clear that he intends to barrel forward with the MAGA agenda.
Unsurprisingly, he solid the previous 43 days of disruption and controversy as stuffed with historic wins, the best of any president in historical past (George Washington was quantity two, he mentioned). And whereas he provided few new particulars on what he deliberate going ahead, it’s apparent we should always count on extra of the identical.
For example, Trump sounded smitten by increasing his commerce conflict, hyping a brand new spherical of “reciprocal tariffs” he says will go into impact April 2. These tariffs, he claims, are on international locations which have their very own tariffs on US items — or which have value-added taxes. He talked about the European Union, India, Brazil, and South Korea as tariff targets, along with China, Canada, and Mexico, which he’s already imposed tariffs on. There “could also be a bit of little bit of an adjustment interval” for American agricultural exporters, Trump mentioned.
In the meantime, Trump claimed he was going to “stability the federal finances,” but additionally championed his plan for giant new earnings and enterprise tax cuts, together with reiterating his marketing campaign guarantees to make suggestions, time beyond regulation funds, and Social Safety earnings tax-exempt. It’s onerous to see how that math might add up. Trump additionally praised Elon Musk and rattled off greater than a dozen absurd-sounding contracts that he claimed Musk’s workforce had canceled. On the subject of rising egg costs, Trump blamed President Joe Biden and mentioned his workforce was “working onerous” to decrease them however didn’t supply any specifics.
One massive query mark for the speech was how Trump would deal with Ukraine after Friday’s Oval Workplace blow-up and the administration’s subsequent pause on assist to the nation. On Tuesday morning, Ukraine’s president Volodymyr Zelenskyy made a social media submit that appeared to present in to a number of of Trump’s calls for whereas calling Friday’s disastrous assembly “regrettable.”
In his speech, Trump mentioned, “I admire that he despatched that letter,” and added that Russia had despatched “sturdy alerts that they’re prepared for peace. Wouldn’t that be stunning?” Nevertheless, he didn’t give any additional particulars on what he hoped a peace association would seem like.
Trump bragged that his administration had ended “wokeness” and “range, fairness, and inclusion” not solely within the federal authorities but additionally within the personal sector. Along with his typical denunciation of unauthorized immigrants who dedicated crimes, Trump attacked trans athletes — one in every of his invited company had been injured when, in Trump’s phrases, “her women’ volleyball match was invaded by a person.”
“Wokeness is bother, wokeness is unhealthy, it’s gone,” he mentioned. “And we really feel so a lot better for it, don’t we?”
Throughout the speech, Democrats tried to point out protest in varied methods. Rep. Al Inexperienced (D-TX) disrupted the speech originally and was escorted out of the chamber by the Home sergeant at arms. Others held up small indicators with phrases like “Save Medicaid” or “Musk steals” written on it, or selected to stroll out themselves. However finally, Trump’s speech wasn’t meaningfully disrupted.
