“Wouldn’t that be beautiful?” Mr. Trump said.
He
was less conciliatory toward Canada, Mexico and China after imposing
tariffs earlier in the day that roiled global markets and drew rebukes
from the countries’ leaders. The president said nothing in his speech
Tuesday night to suggest that an extended trade war might yet be
averted.
“Whatever
they tariff us, other countries, we will tariff them,” he said.
“Whatever they tax us, we will tax them. If they do non-monetary tariffs
to keep us out of their market, then we do non-monetary barriers to
keep them out of our market.”
Together,
the president’s remarks underscored the chaotic, whiplash nature of the
opening weeks of Mr. Trump’s second term. Much of the lengthy speech
was filled with grievances about his treatment by Democrats and
exaggerations about his accomplishments. It capped a six-week blitz of
actions since Mr. Trump took office, a period in which he has fired
government workers, frozen foreign aid, upended international alliances,
pardoned rioters and issued a flood of executive orders.
“Six
weeks ago, I stood beneath the dome of this Capitol and proclaimed the
dawn of the Golden Age of America,” Mr. Trump said, repeatedly appearing
to veer from his prepared remarks. “From that moment on, it has been
nothing but swift and unrelenting action to usher in the greatest and
most successful era in the history of our country.”
From
the first moments of his address, Mr. Trump faced heckling from
Democrats as he declared that “America is back.” Democrats barely
applauded, while Republicans enthusiastically cheered. When
Representative Al Green, a Democratic lawmaker from Texas, repeatedly
yelled “you don’t have a mandate” and refused to sit down, it exposed
the deep divisions in Congress and the country.
“Mr. Green, take your seat,” Speaker Mike Johnson ordered him.
When he refused, he was escorted out.
“The
people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand and certainly
will not cheer for these astronomical achievements,” Mr. Trump said,
striking a note of self-pity that he had not gained acceptance from
Democrats in the chamber. “They won’t do it no matter what.”
There
have been other outbursts during presidential speeches in recent years,
including by Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, Republican of
Georgia, during the Biden administration and Representative Joe Wilson,
Republican of South Carolina, during the Obama administration. Both
remained in the chamber after interrupting the president.
Just
days after threatening to abandon a European ally at war and kicking
off a trade war, Mr. Trump offered no new policy proposals, repeatedly
denigrated former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and mocked Democrats in
the audience for their inability to stand in the way of his agenda.
The
president did not dwell on foreign policy, though he again threatened
to annex the Panama Canal, saying that “my administration will be
reclaiming the Panama Canal, and we’ve already started doing it.”
He
said he wanted to construct a “golden dome” to protect the United
States from missile strikes and create a new shipbuilding office, and he
tried to entice Greenland to leave Denmark and join the United States.
He also announced that the United States had apprehended a terrorist who
organized the bombing of the Abbey Gate during the withdrawal of troops
from Afghanistan.
Mr.
Trump spent much of his time telling the stories of Americans he
invited to watch his address in the gallery, including the victims of
violent immigrants and a boy with cancer who dreamed of becoming a
police officer.
Throughout,
he appeared to obsess over his political rivals. At one point, he
motioned to Democrats, saying the system of justice in the country had
been taken over by “radical left lunatics.” In response, progressive
members of the party held up panels that said “False” and “That’s a
lie.”
A number
of Democrats staged a small protest, standing up and turning their backs
toward Trump with T-shirts that said “resist” on the back. Instead of
risking being removed by the sergeant-at-arms, the group quietly walked
off the House floor.
Other
Democrats chose to walk out of the speech, including Representative
Maxwell Frost, Democrat of Florida, who wore a shirt that said “No Kings
Live Here.”
“I
could not in good conscience sit through this speech and give an
audience to someone who operates with lawless disregard for Congress and
the people of this nation,” said Representative Ayanna Pressley,
Democrat of Massachusetts.
Mr.
Trump accused Democrats of ignoring the “common-sense revolution” that
he and his administration had begun to put in place. He addressed his
opponents in the audience with contempt, gloating about his election
victory, mocked them for his ability to evade prosecutions and called
Mr. Biden the worst president in American history.
At
one point, the president compared the treatment he received on the
internet to the victims of revenge porn, saying “nobody gets treated
worse than I do online.”
Mr.
Trump claimed falsely that he had inherited an “economic catastrophe”
from Mr. Biden. In fact, the United States had the strongest economy in
the world when Mr. Trump took over, but it has been showing signs of
strain in recent weeks amid federal funding cuts and tariffs.
The
president focused on what he claimed was fraud in the federal
bureaucracy discovered by Elon Musk and the Department of Government
Efficiency. For several minutes, Mr. Trump listed off foreign aid and
diversity programs that his government had eliminated, mocking them as
unnecessary.
“Eight million to promote L.G.B.T.Q.I.+ in the African nation of Lesotho, which nobody has ever heard of,” the president said.
House Republican leaders have advised their members to stop holding in-person town halls
amid a torrent of large-scale protests targeting some of the budget
cuts Mr. Musk is overseeing. Even so, a number of Republican lawmakers
jumped to their feet and cheered as the president referred to Mr. Musk,
who was sitting in the gallery.
As
he had in past speeches, Mr. Trump repeated false and exaggerated
claims throughout the speech, prompting reactions from the Democrats in
the chamber.
“That’s
not true,” Representative Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California and the
former House speaker, said quietly and shook her head as Mr. Trump
ticked through debunked claims about the impossible ages of people
collecting Social Security. Republicans, in contrast, cracked up and one
yelled out “Joe Biden” when Trump asserted that someone on Social
Security was older than 300.
Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress may have looked like a State of the Union speech and sounded like one, but it was not — at least not technically.
Starting with Ronald Reagan in 1981, all presidents have delivered
speeches to Congress shortly after their inauguration, and then again
each year. Only those after their first year in office are considered to
be State of the Union addresses.
A
tradition begun by George Washington, the annual speech was
discontinued by the third president, Thomas Jefferson, who opted for a
written report. The speech was revived by Woodrow Wilson in 1913.
Before
the speech began, Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota and
the majority leader, said he hoped some of Mr. Trump’s more extreme
moves were only temporary.
“It’s
a pause, not a stop; I think it’s part of a negotiation,” Mr. Thune
said of the freeze in aid to Ukraine. Of the new tariffs, Mr. Thune
said: “These tariff, I think, are hopefully temporary.”
House Republicans were decidedly more excited.
Speaker Mike Johnson said ahead of the speech: “I would like to frame it in gilded gold.”
Senator
Elissa Slotkin, a first-term Democrat from Michigan, delivered a simple
message as her party’s official response to President Trump’s combative
and lengthy address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night:
Mr. Trump, she said, was “going to make you pay in every part of your
life.”
Ms.
Slotkin, 48, fresh off a victory in a competitive race in a critical
state, took up the tricky task of giving the opposing party’s answer to
the annual congressional address at a moment when Democrats are
struggling to find an effective message and messenger for pushing back
on a president unbound.
During Mr. Trump’s address, some Democrats heckled him, others held up signs of protest and one lawmaker, Representative Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for a cane-waving tirade in which he shouted that Mr. Trump had “no mandate” for his agenda and refused to sit back down.
In
contrast, Ms. Slotkin struck a calm and upbeat tone in her brief
remarks, working to appeal not just to Democrats but to Republicans as
well by introducing herself via her national security credentials. (She
noted that she served three tours in Iraq working for the C.I.A. under
Republican and Democratic presidents.)
Ms.
Slotkin chose to address the nation from Wyandotte, Mich., a city she
noted that both she and Mr. Trump won in November. Mr. Trump’s speech
was the longest presidential address in history, but Ms. Slotkin ignored
most of what he said and kept a tight focus on her argument that the
president’s actions and his agenda would make life more expensive for
Americans.
“Your
premiums and prescriptions will cost more, because the math on his
proposals doesn’t work without him going after your health care,” she
said. She noted that “Elon Musk just called Social Security the biggest
Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Ms.
Slotkin said she agreed with the idea of cutting government waste.
“I’ll help you do it,” she said. “But change doesn’t need to be chaotic
or make us less safe.”
Twice
during her speech, she named previous Republican presidents approvingly
while criticizing Mr. Trump. “I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump
in the office in the 1980s,” she said, noting that Mr. Trump was
“cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin.”
Ms. Slotkin said that Mr. Trump “clearly doesn’t think we should lead the world.”
She
also had a message for demoralized Democrats: “Don’t tune out. It’s
easy to be exhausted,” she said, warning that democracy itself was at
risk.
“I’ve
seen democracies flicker out,” she said. “I’ve seen what life is like
when a government is rigged. You can’t open a business without paying
off a corrupt official. You can’t criticize the guys in charge without
getting a knock on the door in the middle of the night.”
Ms.
Slotkin urged Democrats who felt lost to choose one issue they care
about and get singularly involved with it. “Doomscrolling doesn’t
count,” she said.
Ms.
Slotkin, a center-leaning Democrat who worked as a C.I.A. analyst and
in national security posts in the White Houses of Presidents George W.
Bush and Barack Obama, has had her entire political career defined in
opposition to Mr. Trump. She first won her House seat in 2018 as part of
a tight-knit group of Democratic women with military or intelligence
backgrounds who were recruited to run as a counterweight to the
president.
The
job of the televised response is often seen as a springboard for
politicians to raise their profiles, and Ms. Slotkin reached out to
viewers who might not know her. But the speaking slot can also be a
thankless role, one that has been botched by so many promising elected officials in both parties that it is now considered almost cursed.
Ms.
Slotkin avoided any notable missteps, opting for a straightforward
delivery and a simple message calibrated to be broadly appealing. But
she did not take a strident tone of resistance that many Democrats have
chosen amid a backlash from their core supporters, who want them to be
more forceful in opposing Mr. Trump.
A correction was made on March 5, 2025
An
earlier version of this article misquoted Senator Elissa Slotkin. She
said “I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in the office in the
1980s,” not the 1990s.
Last
year’s rebuttal came from Senator Katie Britt, Republican of Alabama,
who was mocked online afterward for her delivery and forced cheerfulness
as she delivered stark warnings to viewers. Slotkin, by contrast,
delivered her message very matter-of-factly with a gentle yet firm smile
and not much embellishment.
Senator
Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, delivering the Democratic rebuttal, is
speaking favorably of Reagan to contrast Trump’s approach to Russia and
Ukraine. She said that Reagan “must be rolling over in his grave” after
the Oval Office meeting last week, and that she was thankful Reagan was
president in the 1980s — and not Trump.
Some
held up signs, some shouted retorts and others bore their messages of
dissatisfaction on their clothing. More than a dozen left the House
chamber in a show of protest.
Democrats,
eager to register their opposition to President Trump before a big
television viewing audience, wasted no time and displayed little
timidity in venting their animus for Mr. Trump during his evening
address to a joint session of Congress.
Al Green Escorted Out During Trump Speech
Representative
Al Green, Democrat of Texas, was removed from the House chamber after
he refused to sit down during President Donald Trump’s join address to
Congress.
Chanting:
“U.S.A., U.S.A. U.S.A., U.S.A. U.S.A., U.S.A. U.S.A., U.S.A.” Speaker
Johnson: “Mr. Green, take your seat. Take your seat, sir. Take your
seat. If members continue to engage in willful and concerted disruption
of proper decorum, the chair now directs the sergeant at arms to restore
order — remove this gentleman from the chamber. Members are directed to
uphold and maintain decorum in the House. Mr. President, continue.”
“Thank you.”
“What about the eggs,” one lawmaker shouted when Mr. Trump hailed improvements to the economy.
“Stock
market?” a chorus of Democrats shouted, feigning puzzled expressions as
Mr. Trump lauded his own economic achievements, telling lawmakers that
he inherited an “economic catastrophe” from former President Joseph R.
Biden Jr.
Representative
Jasmine Crockett, Democrat of Texas, stood and turned her back on Mr.
Trump as he assigned blame to Mr. Biden for the country’s economic
misfortunes. She, along with a handful of her Democratic colleagues —
including Representatives Maxwell Frost of Florida, Melanie Stansbury of
New Mexico and Maxine Dexter and Andrea Salinas, both of Oregon —
briefly made their protests with messages on black T-shirts, some
emblazoned with the word “RESIST” and exited the chamber before the
sergeant-at-arms had the opportunity to remove them.
Moments
earlier as Mr. Trump entered the House chamber for his speech and shook
the hands of dozens of Republican lawmakers, Ms. Stansbury held up a
sign reading “This is not normal.” The sign was snatched from her hands
by Representative Lance Gooden, Republican of Texas, but not before
being captured in a frame just above Mr. Trump by the dozens of
photographers who were in the chamber for the address.
While
dozens of Democratic lawmakers arrived for the address sporting pink
blazers and ties, carrying on a yearslong tradition of a silent
sartorial protest, other members opted for a less subtle approach.
Jill
Tokuda of Hawaii scrawled phrases from the 14th Amendment — which Mr.
Trump has proposed changing to deny citizenship to some U.S.-born
children of immigrants — onto her pink blazer. “We the people” was
written across her lapels.
Representative Delia Ramirez, Democrat of Illinois, revealed a T-shirt under her black blazer reading “NO KING. NO COUP.”
The
largest coordinated display of disapproval was in the form of round
auction paddle-style signs held by dozens of Democrats with phrases
including “Save Medicaid” and “Musk Steals.” Many of the signs had the
message “False” on the reverse side. Democrats raised them throughout
the speech to register nonverbal objections to specific claims by Mr.
Trump without risking removal from the chamber.
Some
who participated in the varied forms of protest said that the content
of Mr. Trump’s remarks was too much to bear. Representative Ayanna
Pressley of Massachusetts was among the more than a dozen Democrats who
left the speech early.
“I
could not stand one more second, tolerate one more second,” she said in
a video she recorded outside the chamber after exiting, adding that Mr.
Trump’s remarks were full of “lies” and “propaganda.”
Trump referred in the speech to a “letter” from Zelensky.
What he described was the social media post from the Ukrainian
president — which was, nonetheless, the note of submission and gratitude
that Trump was looking for.
“Oh
my God,” Nancy Pelosi mouthed to her seat mate, Representative Steny
Hoyer, Democrat of Maryland, when Trump asserted he was saved by God
during the assassination attempt last year in order to “Make America
Great Again.”
Trump, after announcing that the Zelensky was ready to sign a peace and minerals deal, said “we’ve had serious discussions with Russia and have received strong signals that they are ready for peace.”
