Trump Uses Big Speech to Spin Alternate Reality of ‘Astronomical Achievements’

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Perhaps the clearest distillation of President Donald Trump’s sprawling first address to the new Congress came Tuesday night when he laid the premise for making cuts to Social Security, a program he cast as ripe with fraudulent payments to zombies. It was as disingenuous as it might prove persuasive to those Americans who are cheering for Trump’s race through Washington, torching all he touches.

“Over 130,000 people, according to the Social Security databases, are aged over 160 years old,” Trump asserted. He then added there are 1,041 people over the age of 220. The claims have been thoroughly debunked, with even his own Social Security chief explaining it is a misreading of an ancient federal database, one that could cost $9 million to update, and none of those “people” were getting monthly checks.

But facts were not the point in the speech. This was a night entirely about feelings, and many of Trump’s promises sounded good to his ear with him at the center of the circus.

Car loans’ interest payments to become tax deductible, but only made-in-America vehicles? Sounds good, until you realize auto production supply chains make that designation almost impossible.

A citizenship-for-sale scheme for super-rich foreigners? That’s not something a President can do unilaterally.

Automatic death penalties for those convicted of murdering law enforcement? His existing executive order only instructs the Justice Department to pursue them, but Congress and the courts are going to have something to say about such instant sentencing.

If everything about this feels overwhelming, that is because it is, and by design. For the last six weeks, Americans have been yanked and ghosted, lurched and launched with a merciless urgency. “Swift and unrelenting action” is how Trump pumped up his record. It was one of the rare completely unspun statements of the evening. 

If the cruelty was the point of the first Trump term, then the chaos is the thesis of the second. As TIME’s Eric Cortellessa reported going into the evening, Trump’s team was more interested in staging moments to go viral than presenting an operating argument for actually governing. He did not leave the Capitol empty handed. There were plenty of headlines, made-for-TV moments, and memes that partisans of all stripes can exploit.

So much of Washington has been spiraling since Trump returned to town. Every day seems to bring new developments, reversals, and initiatives, each more brazen than the last. Democrats in Congress have watched with confusion, fear, and outrage as Trump has taken steps that have canned tens of thousands of federal workers, shut down offices that feed the world’s poor and track weather systems, and upended decades of international norms. Nothing has been beyond Trump’s boorish reach, not even a Kennedy Center musical about a shark who befriends would-be prey or, briefly, the building that houses the American Red Cross.

So as Trump stood under the klieg lights of Congress on Tuesday night and before millions of Americans, he took the next logical step toward a more disunified national agenda. With his pronouncements, Trump made pledges to purge and criminalize revenge porn, expand foster care programs, and pursue debunked theories about autism. He returned to a missile defense shield for the U.S., right after informing one student he was heading to West Point and a child with brain cancer he had just been made an honorary Secret Service agent. He suggested the United States had succeeded in reclaiming the Panama Canal, hinted that Greenland would become part of the United States “one way or another,” and would relaunch shipbuilding as a major domestic industry. 

It was impossible to keep track of what was practical and what was purely political messaging, which is entirely how Trump has been lashing D.C. since Jan. 20. It has left everyone just doing their best to keep up.

When Rep. Al Green of Texas, a Democratic lawmaker who is often a step afield from his party, stood in protest of Trump, House Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him removed by the security staff. Democrats stayed in their seats holding signs declaring “Musk Steals,” their minor attempt at expressing disapproval of Elon Musk’s rampage through government. Within the first half hour of a record-breaking 100-minute speech, Democratic lawmakers began to stream out of the chamber in disgust with Trump’s constant blaming of former President Joe Biden for all that came before. Toward the end, Sen. Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts clapped in defiance when Trump singled her out as “Pocahantas.” 

All the while, Republicans stood and cheered on command, including one of the biggest eruptions for Musk. With very few exceptions, Trump’s party has allowed him to ditch career professionals that run the mundane, day-to-day cogs of government. Few objected when he remade maps and sought naked retribution against any who refused to call it The Gulf of America. Even as the stock market took a pounding as Trump’s trade war rippled from Wall Street to Main Street to farm fields, none dared to confront Trump over his ill-informed plan to levy tariffs on some of America’s most reliable and deep-pocketed economic partners. The answer, per guidance from GOP House Leadership, was just to stop holding town halls where lawmakers could face a grilling from rightly angry constituents who were promised a more orderly Trump 2.0.

Trump rightly expected no serious threat to his hold over Washington. While senior GOP Senators had deep reservations bordering on hostility toward some of Trump’s Cabinet picks, he ultimately lost only one. (That was disgraced former House Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew before his paperwork was even sent to the Senate.) Trump barrelled his way into his first Cabinet meeting—complete with Musk in a baseball cap and T-shirt—on Feb. 26 and then into the House Chamber a week later. (On Tuesday, Musk wore a suit.) As one very smart insider observed to me last week, a whole lot of bad choices made by many Americans with varying degrees of real or imagined power led to this moment. Once a power is abdicated, it seldom comes back easily or with as much strength as before. For Republican lawmakers, the atrophy has been as severe as it has been rapid.

So as Trump arrived at the Capitol, his GOP friends had little choice but to fall in line in a speech that was more rallying cry than policy proposals. When he called “Joe Biden the worst President in American history,” his party went along with it. When he devoted time in his first joint address to this Congress to boast about his electoral win last year, he got plenty of cover from his base in the room. The cheers continued for his denigrating diversity, equity, and inclusion programs that he ended. And when he complained he wasn’t getting sufficiently praised, there were sympathetic cheers. “These people, sitting right here, will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements. They won’t do it, no matter what,” Trump said. Everyone knew the script even if no one bothered to read it.

That’s not to say there aren’t reasons for Trump’s circle to be worried. The trade war is objectively bad politics; in the last two days, the tariff tiff erased the entire gains Wall Street posted since Trump won in November. The undefined goals of the tit-for-tat escalation with some of the United States’ most important partners has left markets reeling and businesses baffled as to how this ends. It was, put plainly, a huge risk with really poor odds for an American win. It drew the most tepid reaction from Republicans of the evening, even if Trump was not taking the hint.

“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening, and it will happen rather quickly. There may be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much,” Trump promised, downplaying the risk that has investors freaking out.

All the while, the deep cuts to government are starting to become more clear to voters. His feud with Ukrainian leaders was out of step with the hawks in the GOP, and huge portions of the American public. The culture-war spat over transgender rights, “wokeness,” and English as a national language does zero to offset the economic devastation of his unpredictable trade efforts. And there is a sense that his grievance-driven agenda is starting to feel like the grind of a reality show that goes a few seasons too long.

None of this seemed to rattle Trump, who treated the evening as an opportunity to rewrite the history to his liking, one in which he alone has power in Washington.

“We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplish in 4 years or 8 years. And we are just getting started,” Trump said.

He may well be correct. More than 400 executive actions are on the books and he is closing in on 100 executive orders. But much of it may not track with what Trump is selling. The details are not the point. The chaotic flurry of activity is. And Trump is completely aware that he is Washington’s pacecar.

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