Trump’s 2025 speech to Congress (or SOTU) masked the economic and international
Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.
In the opening minutes of his feature-length speech to Congress on Tuesday night—the longest presidential address to a joint session in history—President Donald Trump argued that his second administration had “accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in four years or eight years.”
“And,” he said, “we are just getting started.”
That may have been one of the least wrong things he said all night. The second Trump administration, relative to other recent presidencies, has spent its first month and a half reorienting the axis of the United States government.
Just not in the way he presented it in his speech.
In his view, largely echoing that which he says day after day after day, he’s eliminating hidden “waste, fraud, and abuse” within the government on a massive scale that will replenish American coffers, creating peace both abroad and domestically, and making America rich and respected once again. His presentation was characteristic: It was performed in a variety show format, with interruptions for special prizes for the audience. During the speech, he granted admission of one high schooler to West Point and deputized a 13-year-old with cancer an honorary member of the Secret Service. A receiving line of other guests in the chamber were given the spotlight to serve Trump’s argument that he had destroyed “wokeness” in all of its sinister mutations through one executive order or another, or to prove that he had cracked down hard on immigration.
The variety show, though, papered over what really has gone down in the very, very productive first weeks of the administration.
The biggest story of the second Trump administration domestically has been its assault on the federal government and its congressionally appropriated functions, with Elon Musk as the driving force by but no means sole actor. Trump’s presentation of these efforts seemed a hair defensive in the speech, as if the White House, having seen poor polling of Musk, decided that it could’ve used a bit of a reintroduction.
Musk was at the speech—no chance he would miss it—as Trump delivered a list of the “appalling waste” he found. He gave a long list of silly-sounding projects, like “$8 million to promote L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of” or “$10 million for male circumcision in Mozambique” or cash for “Arab Sesame Street” in the Middle East. (“It’s a program. $20 million for a program.”) He cited at length, and we do mean at length, debunked statistics insinuating that tens of millions of dead people, some of them more than 200 years old, were getting Social Security payments. Isn’t all this so wild?
What’s really happening in the administration? Trump and Musk are shutting down agencies and programs that Congress has funded but which they don’t like, which not only violates law requiring the disbursement of such funds but could have dramatic consequences for the lives of people both at home and abroad. He’s begun and plans to continue mass layoffs of federal workers—including at places like the Social Security Administration, which is responsible for both policing the waste, fraud, and abuse he despises as well as sending out checks. He’s shattered the core of American soft power by dismantling USAID and freezing foreign aid. None of these cuts change the trajectory of federal deficits in the slightest—and none of them root out meaningful “waste, fraud, and abuse,” an effort that requires both investment and staff—but they sure upset the apple cart in ways that will be felt both sooner and later.
Trump both campaigned on and devoted heavy administration resources from the start to shutting down the Southern border. Though the number of encounters had been falling since the Biden administration abruptly shifted course last summer, Trump did bring the monthly number to its lowest level in decades in February. That was something Trump had a mandate to change, and can say he has changed.
But on the other major issue where Trump had a mandate for change—getting costs under control—things are a little more worrisome. The price and availability of eggs, the goddamn eggs, are not good. (In his brief mention of eggs in the speech, Trump blamed this on Joe Biden.) The country is facing new inflationary pressures, and Republicans’ signature…
Read More: Trump’s 2025 speech to Congress (or SOTU) masked the economic and international