Trump’s Strategy For His Speech to Congress: Craft Viral Moments, Blame Biden

It’s been nearly five years since Donald Trump last addressed a joint session of Congress. But after a pandemic, a lost election, an insurrection, two assassination attempts, and an improbable political comeback, he will return Tuesday night with scores to settle and an agenda to advance. At the heart of his speech, sources close to Trump tell TIME, will be a message that he’s delivering on his promise to smash the institutions of government and remake Washington.

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Already, Trump’s presidency has ushered in dramatic change. He’s signed more than 70 executive orders—the most of any president in their first 100 days in nearly a century—on everything from pardoning Jan. 6 defendants and banning transgender people from the military to imposing stiff tariffs on foreign imports and renaming the Gulf of Mexico. He’s also quickly realigning America’s role in the world, voting with Russia at the United Nations and scolding Ukrainian President Volodomyr Zelensky in an Oval Office shouting match. At the same time, Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has swiftly commandeered the federal bureaucracy and effectively eliminated a congressionally-approved government agency. 

Trump’s full-throttle style has made it difficult, if not impossible, for most Americans to track everything he’s doing. In fact, that’s the point. Aides say Trump intends to use his hourlong address to Congress to frame the narrative of his first 40 days and promote his objectives by crafting a series of viral moments that will outlive the speech itself. The approach abides with the Trump World view that the sound bites that permeate traditional and social media in the days that follow will do more to shape hearts and minds than anything else. 

“He sees these big media opportunities as moments he can try to make the public think the way he wants them to think,” says Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University.

Still, the President is contending with some early setbacks and tribulations. Despite his vows of launching a mass deportation operation, Trump has so far removed migrants at a slower pace than Biden did during his last year in office. Many Americans have expressed alarm over Musk’s radical cost-cutting operation; one poll found that only 34% of respondents approved his handling of the job. And the Trump 2.0 economy has yet to show signs of gains: the stock market is down, the price of eggs and beef are climbing, and inflation hasn’t cooled. Trump’s popularity, according to multiple surveys, has been sinking since his inauguration. 

Trump has routinely blamed Biden for many of his administration’s woes. A White House official tells TIME to expect more of that Tuesday evening. “He’s going to speak directly to the American people about the challenges he inherited from the previous administration,” the official says. Then, in typical Trump fashion, he will pitch himself as the solitary figure who can rescue the nation from decline. “He’s going to showcase why he is the man for this moment.” 

On this point, Democrats plan to punch back. They see an opportunity to puncture Trump’s declaration of American renewal. House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries has invited fired federal employees and average Americans who have been negatively affected by DOGE’s cuts as his guests for the speech, according to a source familiar with the matter. Sen. Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, a former CIA analyst, will deliver the official Democratic response. She’s expected to prosecute the case against Trump’s stewardship of U.S. foreign policy in particular. 

The Democratic retort to Trump’s speech will test a party split on a larger strategy for how to confront the President. Some are pushing for a relentless resistance campaign, like Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut. “I’m of the school that you have to fight every day and that if you don’t, people aren’t going to think that it’s a red alert moment,” he told NBC News. Others, like veteran strategist James Carville, think Trump’s opponents should simply hold their fire and let the Administration self-destruct. “It’s time for Democrats to embark on the most daring political maneuver in the history of our party: roll over and play dead,” he wrote in the New York Times. “Allow the Republicans to crumble beneath their own weight and make the American people miss us.”

In the weeks since Republicans gained control of the White House and Congress, Democrats have struggled to combat the President in the public square. That’s no accident. Trump and his MAGA allies have systematically created a communications infrastructure to give Trump a strategic advantage within a fragmented media environment. There’s now a constellation of right-wing networks, podcasts, and platforms friendly to Trump and his army of influencers. Trump’s team has already been working closely with right-wing media personalities to capitalize on Trump’s congressional address, sources tell TIME. Many were invited to the White House last week to discuss strategies for how to boost Trump.    

On Tuesday night, the White House’s social media team, working in conjunction with online influencers, plan to pick targeted moments to disseminate on social media, where some clips are likely to find more viewers than the full address or the Democratic response.

In addition to promoting his record, aides say, Trump will use the occasion to advance his most ambitious goals: getting to Mars (a pet cause of Musk’s), winning the artificial intelligence race against China, achieving U.S. energy independence, and ending the wars in Europe and the Middle East. 

More than anything, though, Trump’s first address to Congress will serve as a marker. More than 32 million Americans watched last year’s State of the Union. This year’s speech is expected to draw higher ratings. The reaction of viewers, and the millions who see clips of Trump’s speech in its aftermath, will test just how much Americans really like the change Trump is delivering. “This is kind of an opening to shed light less on what Trump is doing,” says Zelizer, “but where the country is.”

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