President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, casting himself as the leader of a revolution that had already restored free speech, saved American automakers from destruction and ushered in “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.” It was “a time for big dreams and bold action,” he told Congress. Soon, he said, he’d balance the budget, end the war in Ukraine and bring back “true democracy.” Here’s what our writers thought of his speech.
Best Moment
Binyamin Appelbaum Representative Al Green’s stand in defiance of a president who has governed in defiance of the law. Green’s civil disobedience was the behavior of a man who believes that Trump is a threat to American democracy. Why did he stand alone?
Josh Barro Trump boasted of the sharp drop in migrant encounters at the southern border and mocked President Joe Biden’s insistence that better enforcement would require new laws, declaring, “It turned out that all we really needed was a new president.” An effective line on his strongest issue.
Frank Bruni Trump is on solid political ground — and in his comfort zone — when he talks about cracking down on illegal immigration. Among many lies, he truthfully said that fewer migrants were unlawfully crossing the border: “They heard my words, and they chose not to come.” Hard to dispute that.
Michelle Cottle When Trump had the director of the Secret Service make a 13-year-old boy diagnosed with brain cancer an honorary agent. It was a heartwarming plug for the president’s Make America Healthy Again agenda — and a clever way to gloss over the problematic views of his health and human services chief.
Michelle Goldberg Green’s heckling. Democrats shouldn’t have shown up at all, but if they were going to be there, noisy protest made more sense than holding up dumb little paddles. There’s nothing dignified about quietly playing the foil to an autocratic thug gloating about stripping America for parts.
Katherine Mangu-Ward I have long dreamed of a president dedicating a significant portion of a major speech to cuts to the federal government. Alas, the cuts cited by Trump were relatively small, unlikely to withstand scrutiny from the courts or (as in the case of his promises to stop Social Security payments to 129-year-olds) fictional.
Daniel McCarthy The State of the Union and presidential addresses to Congress like Tuesday night’s have become ritualized partisan performances, so when Trump said there was nothing he could do to get Democrats to stand, applaud or smile, he exposed the theatricality of their opposition. (Not that occasional bipartisanship isn’t theatrical, too.)
Matthew Schmitz Trump’s recitation of improbable-sounding expenses he claimed to have cut was funny. More important, it dramatized the growing conviction on the right that too much public money is going to NGOs that operate without direct political accountability.
Farah Stockman Trump is good at made-for-TV moments that celebrate ordinary people — a kid with cancer gets deputized as a U.S. Secret Service agent, a high schooler finds out he got into West Point, a mother is told that her dead daughter has a wildlife refuge named after her.
Worst Moment
Appelbaum It was 90-plus minutes of bad moments — a typical Trump medley of fabrications, provocations and insults. But the worst part was the perversity of Trump performing a democratic ritual even as he breaks this nation’s laws and destroys its institutions.
Barro The section on inflation, which Trump seemed eager to get past because he has nothing to offer. He blamed Biden, he proposed inflationary policies like new tax cuts, and he touted his massive tariffs, despite the “disturbance” they will cause. Voters elected Trump to cut prices, and he is raising them. No wonder he’d rather talk about girls’ volleyball.
Bruni What nerve Trump has — accusing Democrats of being too causelessly meanspirited and ceaselessly ungenerous to applaud him as he delivered remarks that, like his entire political career, hinged on mocking and savaging them. Unbelievable. And yet not.
Cottle His repeated, literal finger-pointing at the Democratic lawmakers in attendance, as he gloated, trashed Biden and indulged in his characteristic name-calling. “Radical. Left. Lunatics.”
Goldberg Trump’s barrage of easily debunked lies about millions of dead people who could be collecting Social Security checks. The best-case scenario is that he was simply demonstrating, once again, his contempt for the truth, but it seemed like propaganda to justify Social Security cuts.
Mangu-Ward Trump’s promise to balance the federal budget was a lie, and everyone in the room knew it. In the coming days, the people in that room will probably pass a continuing resolution that utterly fails to take seriously the real drivers of the deficit: entitlements, military spending and debt service.
McCarthy The Democrats set themselves up to have the worst moment of the night with their jeering and heckling, especially since it reached full fury as Trump was recounting his popular-vote victory. That made it sound as though the opposition was angry at the American public.
Schmitz The opening section of an overlong speech was wasted on hollow boasting.
Stockman When he walked into the Capitol, a place he incited his supporters to storm, cheered by many of the very people who were forced to flee. A very surreal moment.
What Else Mattered
Appelbaum The frat boy glee on the Republican side of the aisle.
Barro Trump made good use of Skutniks, especially DJ Daniels, a 13-year-old with cancer whom Trump named as an honorary Secret Service agent. Even though his speech felt interminable — far longer than any State of the Union or joint address to Congress since at least 1964 — these bright moments are what casual observers are likely to see as highlights.
Bruni 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.
Cottle Much of the speech was geared toward painting Democrats as knee-jerk champions of a deeply flawed federal government in which much of the American public has lost faith. Clever.
Goldberg Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has been floating the idea that Trump could reverse his destructive tariffs on Canada and Mexico as soon as Wednesday, but that’s not the message Trump sent on Tuesday night. “Tariffs are not just about protecting American jobs,” he said. “They are about protecting the soul of our country.”
Mangu-Ward Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky, brought the Silk Road founder Ross Ulbricht as his guest. Ulbricht recently received a pardon from Trump, the culmination of years of advocacy by Ulbricht’s mom, Lyn, to free her unjustly imprisoned son.
McCarthy Trump has become a master of drawing battle lines that put Democrats at a disadvantage, which he did here by weaving guests’ stories of suffering and injustice into his calls for border controls, stronger policing and children’s safety. As controversial as his policies may sound at first, he turns them into common sense.
Schmitz Various European countries have tried Trump’s “gold card” idea to sell citizenship, and several are now backing away from it. It’s a scheme the United States will also come to regret.
Stockman Trump didn’t gloat as much as I would have expected when he read a message from President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine offering to sign a mineral deal that was derailed last week after a testy press availability with Trump and his entourage.
Binyamin Appelbaum covers economics and business for Opinion.
Josh Barro is the host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.” He also writes a newsletter, Very Serious.
Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University and the author of “The Age of Grievance.” He writes a weekly newsletter for Opinion.
Michelle Cottle covers national politics for Opinion.
Michelle Goldberg is a Times columnist.
Katherine Mangu-Ward is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.
Daniel McCarthy is the editor of Modern Age: A Conservative Review.
Matthew Schmitz (@matthewschmitz) is a founder and an editor of the online magazine Compact.
Farah Stockman is a member of the editorial board and the author of “American Made: What Happens to People When Work Disappears.”
Source photographs by Kayla Bartkowski, Andrew Harnik and Win McNamee, via Getty Images.
Additional production by Aileen Clarke
The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.
Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Bluesky, WhatsApp and Threads.