Greg Sargent: This is The Daily Blast from The New Republic, produced and presented by the DSR Network. I’m your host, Greg Sargent.
Rosenberg: Always great to be with you, Greg.
Rosenberg: I mean, strong theatrics, you know, it felt like it was a last hurrah in some ways — that he was just enjoying himself being on stage. But there was no significant course correction, no significant change in direction that’s going to alter, I think, the struggle that he has.
Sargent: I agree. I think he probably did reconnect with some voters. I want to quickly sum up Trump’s speech. He angrily attacked Democrats for raising issues of affordability. He insisted that he’s engineered a miraculous resuscitation of the American economy, calling it a turnaround for the ages. He claimed he’s completely conquered inflation. He claimed he secured $18 trillion in investments in the country. He called Democrats crazy and cast them aside with immigrant criminals against American citizens.
Rosenberg: I think you touched on it in your remarks, which is that it’s just so crazy that he’s so unconcerned with truth. He is desperate to stay within this world that he’s constructed that you once called Foxlandia — this sort of imaginary world where he’s young and virile and the economy’s booming and everybody in the world loves him. Because he had a choice, right? If things are not going well, you can course correct. He could have accepted [getting] rid of the tariffs. He could have produced a healthcare bill that really actually made people’s lives better.
Because what’s your theory of the case when you are where Trump is right now? Either you have to believe that you can basically bullshit your way through the electorate, or you course correct. And they haven’t course corrected. There’s no evidence of course correcting. And so it means that they’re doubling down on a politics the country has wildly rejected. And there’s enormous risk to it politically for him.
“When you watch low IQ Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as they screamed uncontrollably last night at the very elegant State of the Union, such an important and beautiful event. They had the bulging bloodshot eyes of crazy people.”
Simon, that’s some pretty bifurcated stuff. On the one hand, he’s trying to talk about the economy and appear somewhat like a statesman. But then when he gets into his room and he’s by himself, all of a sudden he erupts into all this crazy talk. What do you make of that?
The failure of his immigration policy, I think, has got to be creating enormous confusion internally in the White House because I don’t think they ever imagined that something like this could happen. I don’t think they even really believe it is happening. I mean, they still have a huge swarm of people in Minnesota and they haven’t really accepted that there’s been a complete repudiation, not only of the escalating power of ICE, but of the mass deportation agenda too.
So candidly, Simon, I know this is something you think about: Republicans are going to have a shit ton of money. This speech is clearly the beginning of an effort to rehabilitate Trump. So as a Democratic strategist looking at these midterms coming up, what do Democrats have to be wary of, both in what we saw in the speech and going forward?
And the thing is, what Democrats have to realize is that in early 2023, Trump was at minus 21 job approval in January of 2023. That’s two or three points lower than where he is now. And so he was in worse shape in January 2023. And after a two-year-long rehabilitation campaign where they tried to repair his broken brand, he was able to get his job approval back to minus seven.
We’re not going to have this countervailing institution to combat the half a billion to a billion dollars of ads — AI slop and all the other Russian disinformation and all the stuff that’s going to be flooding the zone — because this was really the kickoff of the campaign last night. We have to be a little bit worried about them outmatching us financially and also in terms of desperation.
Sargent: What I hear you saying is that Democrats cannot get too confident about the hole that Trump is in. You’re not just saying that it’s money, right? Although money is a big part of it. You’re also saying that on some level you have to be aware of the possibility that they actually can rehabilitate his image in time for the midterms. Is that what you’re saying?
Sargent: Actual political rehabilitation for Trump is something that Democrats have to worry about?
I hope that some version of the after-action report gets released, because it would be informative and helpful for those of us who are working in the 2026 election to understand why it was that we failed to prevent him from being rehabilitated in 2024.
I’m going to read some examples. GOP strategist Matthew Bartlett told Politico that Trump projected patriotism, but he adds this: “In terms of a political speech, there was no policy prescription that will guide Republicans towards safer ground in the midterms.” Another Republican operative told Politico anonymously, “It’s all look behind as great as it all is. I wish we had more detailed steps to take directing Congress to do more for people who are hurting.” And Curt Mills of The American Conservative tells The Independent that Trump has much more to do to sell his economic agenda, adding, “I don’t think this was much of a game changer.”
Rosenberg: Right, because the key here is the tariffs. Donald Trump had an off-ramp on the tariffs and he didn’t take it, and he doubled down. This is what I was saying about the lack of course correction. And I still am a little bit shocked about what he’s done, because he just disregarded the clear sort of intent of what the Supreme Court was doing.
This also happened in the Senate. And I think that part of the frustration you’re probably hearing from many of those folks on the right is that they had an off-ramp. He had a clear kind of path here to get out of the unbelievable economic and political hole that he’s dug himself into, and he didn’t take it.
Sargent: Yes, I think you’re absolutely right that one of the things that Republicans are really saying when they criticize the speech is that, damn it, you’re still stuck with these tariffs. Do you think Trump’s most consequential comments might have been about those tariffs? So let’s listen to him for a second from the speech on this.
Sargent: So that’s incredible stuff, because Trump is still deceiving people about who pays the damn things. They tax consumers. He treats the tariffs as if we don’t pay them, but it’s a regressive tax that working people pay. And he even says that this will do away with the income tax. I guess he means this will do away with taxes on rich people, which — let’s recall — he’s already cut, and he’s using the tariffs to pay for that. Your thoughts on that part.
He’s pushing the tax burden of the United States towards middle-class people and regular working people. And then he’s doubling down on ICE and the terror regime. And they’re not walking away from any of that. And they’re not even negotiating with the Democrats. There’s no negotiation going on in these DHS negotiations. He cannot walk away from those two things.
Enten (voiceover): But if you look at our post-poll right after the State of the Union, I simply don’t see it for him. Why do I say that? View of Trump’s speech to Congress, “very positive,” among speech viewers — who are more Republican than the electorate overall. This was actually the least well-received speech. We’re talking about 38 percent of speech viewers who viewed the speech “very positive.” And that is lower than in 2025, when it was 44 percent; lower than in 2019, when it was 59 percent; lower than in 2018, when it was 48 percent; and lower than it was in 2017, when it was 57 percent. The bottom line is this: State of the Union addresses simply do not, traditionally speaking, move the American electorate. And this Trump speech, especially so, is not likely to move things, because simply put, it was the least well-received one among speech viewers of any of the speeches that Donald Trump has given to a joint session of Congress.
Rosenberg: Yeah, look, he is deeply damaged outside of his core MAGA base. And this was a confirmation of that. In part, Navigator did work called dial groups, which is, as people watch the speech, they push the dial up if they’re happy and down if they’re unhappy. Parts of the speech that did the worst were when he talked about how good the economy was.
He’s not moving away from the right-wing nationalists, the Trumpism, that whole set of ideologies. And that’s the problem that they’ve got right now.
I don’t think, as you heard, the Republican candidates and those that want to win elections in 2026 who are down-ballot are going to be happy with that decision. I think they would have preferred the course correction and to actually have done things that they can run on that are going to help make people’s lives better. And Trump didn’t give them that last night. So I think we’re in this place where we have to anticipate that his desperation grows, his willingness to do extraordinary and dangerous things — like invading Iran with no real plan — because he knows that unless something fundamentally changes, we’re going to win the election, he’s going to get subpoenaed up the wazoo, and as Mike Johnson said, fundamentally his presidency is over. And they’re just going to do whatever they possibly can to prevent that from happening.
Rosenberg: Yeah, it’s good. Listen, we should — I want to just conclude by saying people should feel good about what’s happened. We’ve been successful politically and electorally, but we still have a lot of work ahead of us and this thing is not cooked and we’ve got to work as hard as we can.
Hence then, the article about transcript trump racist tirade at dems bursts maga post speech bubble was published today ( ) and is available on The New Republic ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( Transcript: Trump Racist Tirade at Dems Bursts MAGA Post-Speech Bubble )
Also on site :