Okay, so, I dont actually have a ton to say about this one, but it's tradition for me to react to these so react I shall.
Objectively, putting my feelings for the man aside, it was a good speech. I'm not saying he didn't lie a lot, and spin things in obnoxious ways, he did. But...if I were a middle of the road American with only a surface level understanding of politics, it would be a positive speech. Trump framed his agenda positively. He spun the economic numbers positively. He even spun doing stuff like cutting ACA subsidies (which raise the price of healthcare, btw), as cutting subsidies to greedy insurance companies. He spun his agenda with economic populism, and I believe he was quite effective at doing so. He spun stories of people working tons and tons of overtime, framing them as making more money than ever because of "no tax on tips." I mean, sure, from my perspective I'd ask, why should he have to work so long and hard in the first place, and say we should give everyone a UBI, but again, putting my feelings aside and letting his agenda stand on its own, he was effective in selling it. He told a lot of anecdotal stories. He talked about people murdered by illegal immigrants. he framed the whole thing asking "shouldnt we care more for citizens than illegals?" and the dems, quite frankly, looked kinda bad for not standing for that one. Because even I would say yes. I mean, I wanna be real. Im NOT opposed to deporting illegal immigrants. I just despise Trump's authoritarian measures for doing so that violate the law, the constitution, and any reasonable interpretation of human rights. Moving on, he mentioned the SAVE act, asking why it's unreasonable for people to show ID when voting? In a vacuum it sounds fair, it's only when you research further that you realize there's virtually no voter fraud and he's making up a fake crisis for the sake of voter suppression.
Before his speech, I saw a few quotes from Trump. One mentioned how he loved the poorly educated. Another mentioned that smart people dont like him. And that's kind of the thing here. Trump's speech is very good and persuasive for the uninformed. it features a lot of spin and talking points and emotional anecdotal stories that are persuasive to those who...dont really research things very heavily. If you never listen to politics and have been living under a rock for the last year and you tune into this speech, you very well might like it. It's just that for those of us who actually study the issues in depth, and have in depth understandings of things, that his narratives fall apart, and you start understanding that he's only showing you what he wants you to see. To be fair all presidents do this for the SOTU. Even democrats. And I see through them too. In this speech you'll notice few if any references to the epstein files, to the massive network of concentration camps he's trying to build, the flailing jobs reports, or any weakness or failure of his administration. But to be fair, that's kind of to be expected. This is the president's moment to put his spin on things and to sell Americans on his vision. Idk how persuasive it will be. As I said, it I were living under a rock, apolitical, and I tuned in tonight, I would support Trump's agenda. But as someone who is educated and does have my own views, I see through his speech and didn't find it persuasive. That's not to say it wasnt a persuasive speech for others, or objectively a good speech. Quite frankly, Trump framed his agenda in as positive of a light as possible, and MAGA will probably love it, as well as a lot of R leaning independents. I do expect him to get an approval bump out of this. But yeah, it didn't particularly convince me.
I plan on watching the democratic response next, but wanted to get my thoughts out first before I did. I rarely watch the response live. I get fatigued from listening to trump himself speak for 2 hours so i wanted a break first, where i collect my own thoughts, recharge and then jump back into it. I'll do that next.
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