Washington Wednesday: Applause and absence

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LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday, February 25th. Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. 

Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher. Time now for our State of the Union edition of Washington Wednesday!

And joining us is political scientist Hunter Baker. He is a WORLD Opinions contributor and Provost at North Greenville University. 

Hunter, good morning.

HUNTER BAKER: Good morning.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, long night last night. The longest ever State of the Union address. As someone might say, he put up numbers like we’ve never seen before in the history of this country—an hour and 48 minutes.

But apart from that, and at the risk of sounding a bit partisan here, I was actually surprised by the behavior of the Democrats. They would not stand up for anything. I mean, they stood up for a few things, but they really would not stand up for some very easy things, and that became a theme.

So I want to hear the challenge that the President put out, and let’s just take a moment and listen to that:

DONALD TRUMP: If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support. The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.

Now, Hunter, I have to say, when he said—and he noted that they would not stand up for that—“these people are crazy,” and I found myself in pretty vigorous agreement.

Did the Democrats step in it last night?

BAKER: Certainly this was the situation that he wanted to set up. I mean, you now, you ask a question like that and you put them in the awkward position of either seeming to validate him or agree with him by standing up, or distancing themselves from what would seem like an obviously supportable statement.

But I’m going to tell you why I think they did that.

You know, you had this significant boycott, you had 70-plus Democrats who were not there. So first of all, they may have boycotted thinking that something like this might actually happen during the speech.

But the other part—and I think this is really important to understand—is that a significant strategy that the Democrats have is to make the argument that Donald Trump is somehow illegitimate, dangerous, outside of American norms. There are people who regularly speak of him as an authoritarian president, as though he is really not a suitable president under our Constitution.

And so when you distance yourself from him that much—by boycotting or by refusing to stand—you’re reinforcing that message.

So I really think what you’re seeing is message discipline on the part of the Democrats.

MAST: Well, Hunter, stepping back—big picture here—what was tonight really about overall? Was this a governing speech? Was it a campaign speech? Was it something else?

BAKER: This is the march to the midterms.

You know, Trump is aware that their party typically does badly in the midterm elections, that’s a pattern that’s very well established. He knows that. He knows that if he loses the House then there will be constant investigations, you know, I think as Ted Cruz may have said once, "you’re going to get impeached every other week."

So he doesn’t want that to happen.

And he also knows that his voters may not show up if he’s not on the ballot. So I think that what he’s trying to do is nationalize this election. He’s trying to put himself on the ballot without being on the ballot with this kind of very strong, aggressive speech.

MAST: Well, if you strip away the applause lines, what were the most important policy commitments that you were able to discern?

BAKER: He talked about four major things, I think, at least in terms of domestic policy—which would be things like affordability, immigration, crime, and related to crime would be fraud.

In fact, I think that one of the most interesting lines in the whole thing—and really that kind of sets a tone for the rest of his presidency—was something that he said about JD Vance.

I wonder if we could listen to a clip from the speech.

DONALD TRUMP: But when it comes to the corruption that is plundering—really, it's plundering America—there's been no more stunning example than Minnesota, where members of the Somali community have pillaged an estimated $19 billion from the American taxpayer. We have all the information, and in actuality, the number is much higher than that. And California, Massachusetts, Maine, and many other states are even worse. 

This is the kind of corruption that shreds the fabric of a nation, and we are working on it like you wouldn't believe. So, tonight, although started four months ago, I am officially announcing the war on fraud to be led by our great Vice President, JD Vance.

So this is significant, because typically vice presidents have some kind of policy portfolio that belongs to them. So, for instance, under President Biden, Vice President Harris was supposed to be the point of the spear on immigration, which of course probably hurt her somewhat in her election campaign because she was seen, at least by the electorate, as a failure in that regard—or it was a vulnerability.

So now we have JD Vance being pointed to as the person who’s going to lead in this war against fraud. And so Trump used some eye-popping numbers, talking about $19 billion lost to Somali fraud in Minnesota, and you know, he claimed much more in some other places.

So this would be a significant opportunity for JD Vance to make a name for himself by demonstrating some success in curbing the fraud problem.

EICHER: Well, Hunter, I think you’ll remember this—Ronald Reagan was the first President ever to invite a special guest to the State of the Union. I went and looked this up of course, I did not have this from memory. 

But he recognized a government official by the name of Lenny Skutnik. So Skutnik kind of became a name. He famously jumped into the freezing Potomac River just two weeks earlier than the speech to save a survivor of that terrible Air Florida plane crash up at National Airport.

Every president has had a "Skutnik moment" ever since that time. Every president has used the technique since President Reagan invented it.

But I have to say, I think President Trump took it to a new level. I think he may have broken not just the length-of-speech record tonight, but the Skutnik record tonight.

Do you think that that was effective? Did he do it too much? What do you say about that?

BAKER: I think that he definitely had a method at work there.

We sometimes refer to those people as "the hero on the balcony." So you know, the president points up to the hero on the balcony and offers tribute—typically viewed as a very effective sort of a strategy. For once, the president points away from himself and to some more typical American, kind of extolling their virtues or something that they have done.

In this case, you’re right. It was a lot. There were many, many heroes on the balcony who were pointed to at different points in the speech. Sometimes they had some story that connected to national policy in some way, sometimes they didn’t.

But I think the reason that he did it the way he did was that this was a very aggressive, attacking kind of a speech. It was very intense, there were some moments of real tension in the room as he kind of confronted Democrats. And I think that he used those hero-on-the-balcony moments to try to relieve the stress a little bit, point to something more positive where possible, and give the viewer or listener a little bit of a break.

MAST: Well, Hunter, the President promised he would cover a lot of ground, and at the length of the speech, he certainly did.

I want to know, though, what did you expect to hear that never came?

BAKER: That’s a good question.

I think that I expected to hear more about America 250. He did talk about it from time to time, but I thought of that as the one obviously positive, bring-the-room-together kind of a thing that he could dwell on, and he really didn’t.

I think his memo was: I need to talk about my successes. And so we had a lot about immigration on that front, you know, very strong line: "zero, zero illegal immigrants have crossed the border in the last nine months," that sort of thing.

And of course pointing to the kind of things that he’s trying to do to make health care more affordable, and pointing to successes that he’s had in certain local operations on crime—like with Memphis, with New Orleans, and with Washington, D.C.

MAST: Hunter Baker, our regular Washington Wednesday analyst. Thank you so much for the quick turnaround on this one.

BAKER: Thank you.

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