'It Was 90-Plus Minutes of Bad Moments': 9 Opinion Writers on Trump's Address to Congress NYT
‘Trump Is Good at Made-for-TV Moments’: The Best and Worst Parts of His Speech
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.
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/05/opinion/trump-congress-speech.html
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