As discussed with our two guests on today’s BradCast, Trump’s speech to Congress on Tuesday night was so long and boring it could still be going on today, for all I know. [Audio link to full show follows this summary.]
FIRST UP today, however, a few important news headlines…
- After enacting 25% trade tariffs against our two largest trading partners and allies, Canada and Mexico, on Tuesday — and seeing the stock-market plummet in response — Trump agreed on Wednesday to delay implementation of tariffs on automobile imports, which would have sent car prices skyrocketing in the U.S., for one month.
- The U.S. Supreme Court ruled narrowly against the Trump Administration in one of its first rulings regarding whether or not they will require the Administration to follow the rule of law or not. In a 5 to 4 emergency ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Amy Coney Barrett joined with the Court’s three Democratic appointees to uphold lower court rulings that order the Administration to unfreeze as much as $2 billion in payments to thousands of contractors for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in order to pay for work that has already been completed. Trump’s January 20th Executive Order freezing both contracts and payments, signed on his first day in office, has already resulted in hundreds of layoffs by contractors, food for starving children left rotting in warehouses, and life-saving medicine going undelivered around the world.
- Newly-elected, 70-year old Democratic U.S. Rep. and former Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner of Texas died on Tuesday night following an unspecified medical emergency after attending Trump’s address to Congress, where he used his platform to rally against planned Republican cuts to Medicaid. Turner’s death, and the months it will take to hold a special election to fill his seat, will give House Republicans a bit more breathing room in what is still one of the slimmest House majorities in U.S. history.
THEN, it’s on to the longest — and arguably dullest and most falsehood-filled — addresses to Congress ever delivered by a U.S. President. It wasn’t officially a State of the Union Address, for reasons that aren’t worth boring you with (if you watched the speech, you’ve been through enough already), but it had all the same trappings.
It was also the most vengeful and obnoxiously partisan address ever delivered to Congress by a U.S. President, as Trump repeatedly attacked his predecessor throughout, blaming him for things like the newly-rising cost of eggs, describing Joe Biden as “the worst President in American history” and Democrats as “radical left lunatics”.
The evening also featured some Democrats trying whatever they could think of to push back against Trump’s lawless wrecking ball of an Administration to date. Those efforts resulted in one member, Rep. Al Green of Texas, being removed by the House Sergeant-at-Arms at Speaker Mike Johnson‘s direction, and others walking out at various points throughout the seemingly endless remarks.
We’re joined for insight on all of this today, as ever, by our very smart, old school blogger friends HEATHER DIGBY PARTON, the award-winning columnist at Salon and Digby’s Hullabaloo blog, and the notorious ‘DRIFTGLASS’, longtime fellow blogger and broadcaster, as co-host of the weekly Professional Left Podcast.
The hour and 39-minute speech “was absolutely interminable,” agrees Parton today, arguing that the “litany of atrocities” outlined by Trump as unparalleled achievements in his first six weeks in office, suggests he believes “he is no longer encumbered by the law, by the Constitution, by anything.”
“Who is there left to be persuaded, cajoled, shocked, outraged?,” Driftglass asks rhetorically. “The only thing that is going to shock the people in the middle is economic hardship. The recession that Trump is bringing down on their heads. Cutting off their services. Invading their Social Security. That might actually light a fire under them and get them moving.”
But we will see. We discuss, among many other things…
- the effectiveness, or lack thereof, of attempts by elected Dems to push back against Trump, and the forced removal of spirited protester, Rep. Green, from the proceedings;
- Trump’s vow to “get” Greenland from Denmark “one way or the other” and the beginning of the GOP’s renewed, if ever-present, love for American imperialism;
- the hypocritical reaction to the speech by Congressional Republicans who, just one year ago, were clutching their pearls after what they described as “the most political, partisan speech ever delivered by a President in the hallowed House chamber” following President Biden’s final SOTU.
- how Medicaid and even Social Security are now both “on the chopping block” for Trump and Congressional Republicans;
- and explanations from both Digby and Driftglass as to why Trump is violently dismantling the federal government with Elon Musk and his DOGE Bros, despite the unpopularity of those actions among the public.
That’s just a taste. As ever, tune in for much more…
(Snail mail support to “Brad Friedman, 7095 Hollywood Blvd., #594 Los Angeles, CA 90028” always welcome too!)
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“THE FOUNDERS did not need permission to say goodbye to a tyrant—and neither do we. The grievances in the Declaration of Independence against King George III are a match for the charges against the gentleman from New York, kindling ready to set ablaze. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.”
https://marvindjones.blogspot.com/2025/02/the-end-of-deference.html