President Donald Trump delivered the first proper State of the Union address of his second term tonight – and broke his own record for longest-ever address at one hour, 47 minutes.
That length, though, mostly didn’t go towards laying out complex new policy initiatives. Instead, Trump focused on extolling the achievements of his first year back in office, lambasting Democrats for the state of the country under Joe Biden, and handing out medals to prominent attendees: to the U.S. Olympic men’s hockey team, to a 100-year-old ex-Navy pilot, to the family of a National Guard member who was shot and killed in D.C. last year.
Among the medal recipients was Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer Scott Ruskan, a Warren County native and Rider University alum who helped to rescue 165 people during last year’s catastrophic flooding in Texas; Ruskan was awarded the Legion of Merit Medal.
The president also used the prolonged speech to promote his tariff regime, vowing to continue imposing tariffs on the rest of the world while rebuking members of the U.S. Supreme Court, four of whom were seated in front of him, for recently ruling against him. And he touted a number of proposals that Republicans have already implemented or plan to implement that he said will lower costs, such as his prescription drug program TrumpRx and his plan to prevent investment firms from driving up housing prices.
“When I last spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy, inflation at record levels, a wide-open border, horrendous recruitment for military and police, rampant crime at home, and wars and chaos all over the world,” Trump said. “But tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before.”
Going unmentioned, however, were several policy battles that are currently roiling New Jersey politics. Trump spoke of the need to deport illegal immigrants, but did not reference his administration’s push for more immigrant detention centers, which has recently caused controversy in the suburban town of Roxbury; he also did not bring up the Gateway Tunnel, a major infrastructure project connecting New York and New Jersey that Trump has declared war against.
In contrast to last year’s address, which was riddled with heckling and protest signs, the Democratic side of the aisle was more muted this year, with a handful of important exceptions. Many Democratic lawmakers, among them Senator Cory Booker and Reps. Bonnie Watson Coleman (D-Ewing) and LaMonica McIver (D-Newark), skipped the address entirely.
“Donald Trump cannot open his mouth without lying,” Watson Coleman, who instead spoke at a rival event on the National Mall, said prior to the address. “There was no reason to go and stand there and listen to him be cognitively impaired and lie. So I said no, I’m not going. I’m not putting myself through that crap.”
“The one thing he could say tonight that he’d have my approval on is, ‘I resign,’” she added.
Most of the Democrats who were in attendance registered their disapproval of Trump’s remarks with stony silence or occasional jeering. Rep. Rob Menendez (D-Jersey City) laughed out loud when Trump said he was working to build a government that “answers to the people, not the powerful”; Rep. Herb Conaway (D-Delran) got up and left before the address was even over.
At one point, Trump deliberately taunted Democrats and their refusal to cheer, insisting that everyone in attendance stand up if they, for example, believed that the government should protect American citizens, not “illegal aliens.” Democrats resolutely remained in their seats.
Republicans, among them New Jersey’s three GOP congressmen, responded enthusiastically to nearly all of what Trump put forward, including more controversial moments like when he claimed that Democrats will only win a congressional majority again if they cheat.
Prior to the address, Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-Dennis) said that he hoped the president would address tariffs, health care, energy costs, and the war in Ukraine. Asked whether there might be anything where he did not agree with the president, Van Drew acknowledged there might be.
“There have been issues in the past where, sometimes, I’ve disagreed,” Van Drew said, citing a dispute over now-expired Obamacare subsidies that boiled over late last year. “There could be some things he says that I disagree with, absolutely.”
After the address ended, however, Van Drew was one of the very first to come up to Trump to congratulate him on a job well done.
“Mr. President, that was a home run,” the congressman said.
