Pay Attention to What Trump Didn’t Say

Hint: All the stuff that makes America great.

Every day from now until November 3, the big question for Donald Trump is this: Did he do anything today to prevent the galactic midterm shellacking that seems to be hurtling toward his GOP thanks to his deeply unpopular administration?

Yesterday, the answer was “no.” Despite its record length, nothing in Trump’s excruciatingly bloated and aimless State of the Union address will do a thing to stanch the bleeding of his popular support. His best attempt to manufacture a big moment came when he ordered Democrats in the chamber, whom he had been hectoring and scolding throughout the speech, to “stand up and show your support” if they agreed that “the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” When Democrats declined to participate in the song-and-dance, MAGA observers thundered that they’d revealed themselves to be double agents all along: “The entire Democrat Party disqualified itself from government service in this one exchange,” Stephen Miller rage-tweeted.

And if they think pushing that button is what’s going to carry them the midterms—hey, gang, knock yourselves out. Happy Wednesday.

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President Donald Trump exits the House Chamber after delivering the State of the Union address. (Photo by Kenny Holston-Pool/Getty Images)

Revealing Omissions

by William Kristol

I’m not convinced that Nietzsche was correct when he said that “What does not kill me, makes me stronger.” I’m not even sure that less dramatic suffering is good for the soul. I’ve certainly never seen the appeal of masochism.

So I didn’t watch Donald Trump’s State of the Union address last night.

And when I woke up this morning and discovered that I’d missed a speech that lasted one hour and 48 minutes—the longest State of the Union ever—I felt good about my decision. But of course I do have the duty to share some kind of organized thoughts with you all—a duty to which the president is apparently not subject. So fortified with my mug of Major Dickason’s coffee, as the sun rose over the melting snows of Northern Virginia, I read what Trump said last night.

My reaction to Trump’s speech mirrored Samuel Johnson’s famous (but probably unfair?) judgment of Milton’s Paradise Lost: “None ever wished it longer than it is. Its perusal is a duty rather than a pleasure.”

But I did my duty. I perused Trump’s State of the Union from beginning to end.

And I can report that I didn’t learn much from doing so. The speech will, I’m quite sure, soon be forgotten. The address won’t change people’s judgments about Trump’s presidency so far. And it won’t affect its course going forward.

So I won’t burden you with much in the way of analysis. Actually, I won’t burden you with any analysis. (You’re welcome!)

I’ll just make one observation: Sometimes what’s interesting is what isn’t said. And in an address that Trump framed by noting that this year is the 250th anniversary of our independence, one could be struck by the absence of several iconic American ideas.

Here are a few terms that President Trump never uttered last night:

Equality.

Rights.

The rule of law.

The Constitution. (Trump mentioned the Declaration of Independence only once, in passing, despite this being its 250th anniversary.)

Republic (though Trump referred to Republicans six times).

Democracy (though Trump attacked Democrats nine times).

Immigrants (“immigration” was used three times, in each case negatively. And when Trump claimed—falsely—that he supports legal immigration, he referred to people “coming in,” but didn’t call those people “immigrants.”)

Other terms central to the meaning of the United States were used very sparingly.

Opportunity appeared only once (“And here is one more opportunity to show common sense in government”), but never in its broad thematic meaning.

Justice was used twice, but both times in the sense of punishment (ensuring justice for a wrongdoer), rather than as a purpose of government or a feature of our society.

Speaking of justice, I should also remark that Donald Trump predictably took no notice of the Epstein survivors present in the gallery. Nor did he mention the Epstein files his Justice Department has not released.

And for all the many tales of violence and bloodshed Trump seemed to enjoy relating in the speech, he never mentioned these admirable individuals killed by agents of the federal government sent to Minnesota by Donald Trump: Renee Good and Alex Pretti.

Our president has no interest in elevating what is distinctive and admirable about America. Nor does he have any interest in addressing instances of gross injustice in America. For now, those are our tasks, and our duty. It is, after all, our Union, not Donald Trump’s.

If you had to write the first line of a State of the Union address for a normal president on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, what would you write? Extra challenge: Try options for two normal parties. Share your thoughts in the comments.

The Gender Gap on Ice

by Rachel Janfaza

The Olympic-champion U.S. men’s hockey team attended Donald Trump’s State of the Union address last night, having presumably recovered from the post-victory revelry they shared with FBI Director Kash Patel. Not in attendance was the Olympic-champion U.S. women’s hockey team, whom Trump also invited—after he joked that he’d be impeached if he didn’t.¹

This situation provided another example of the yawning gender gap that has developed in our politics—particularly among Gen Z.

That gender gap was most pronounced in the 2024 presidential election, when young women favored Kamala Harris by 17 points, while young men favored Trump by 14 points. Beyond elections, the gap shows up in social media, in pop-culture, and, yes, sports.

Frankly, the gender gap is old news, and the fact that young people share it isn’t exactly new. But the interesting thing is that diverging politics doesn’t lead to personal animosity in Gen Z. The Olympic hockey teams offer the perfect example.

Look no further than the fact that Jack Hughes, who said that the first person he thought of after scoring the game-winning goal for the men’s team was Megan Keller, who had done the same for the women. Throughout the games, the men’s team consistently shouted out the women’s team.

According to Hughes’s mother, Ellen, (a hockey legend in her own right and a consultant for the women’s team), the men’s and women’s teams are as supportive of each other as could be. “If you could see what we see from the inside, and the men and women sharing, you know . . . dorm rooms and halls and flex floors, and the camaraderie and the synergy, and the way the women cheered on the men, and the way the men cheered on the women—that’s what it’s all about,” she told “The Today Show” Tuesday. “They care about humanity, they care about unity, and they care about the country.”

Jack Hughes described how he and his brother and teammate, Quinn, reacted when the women won their gold: “I wish—if there’s a camera on me and Quinn when the women’s team won, we’d look like the biggest superfans of all time,” he said.” We were just jumping up and down. We couldn’t believe it.”

Trump’s politics may in fact be popular on the men’s hockey team—at least enough for the athletes to attend his speech. There may be some dissenters, and others may be going out of respect for the office. But they don’t appear to share his misogyny. “And we have to, I must tell you, we’re gonna have to bring the women’s team,” he lamented to the men’s team.

One of the male players responded, “Two for two!”

Rachel Janfaza is a researcher focused on Gen Z and a Bulwark contributor.

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AROUND THE BULWARK

• State of the Union Coverage From The Bulwark… In case you missed it (good for you) but want to catch up, SAM STEIN, SARAH LONGWELL, TIM MILLER, ANDREW EGGER, JOE PERTICONE, and LAUREN EGAN gave real-time reaction and analysis as President Trump delivered his address. Special guest PETE BUTTIGIEG joined the panel after the address.

• A Republican’s Sex Scandal Could Paralyze the House… Plus, Press Pass enthusiasts will appreciate that JOE PERTICONE did a Reddit AMA inside the House chamber for the State of the Union. (You may have seen him on TV).

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Quick Hits

KASH FLIES EVERYWHERE AROUND ME: Amazingly, the Kash Patel FBI-jet headlines keep coming. For months, Patel has kept on grouchily insisting that his mostly taxpayer-funded trips² to see his country-singer girlfriend perform in Nashville or to party in the locker room with the U.S. men’s hockey team in Milan were perfectly standard procedure.

Apparently, people inside the FBI are starting to get a little sick of it. On Tuesday, Senate Democrats revealed a whistleblower complaint from an FBI insider alleging that Patel’s private travel had occasionally resulted in investigative delays. (The FBI denies this.) Here’s MSNOW:

Agents with the FBI’s elite evidence response team were delayed in reaching the scene of a mass shooting at Brown University in December because there was no FBI plane available to take them to Rhode Island, according to three sources and a whistleblower’s account newly provided to Congress.

FBI Director Kash Patel was in south Florida at the time with one of the FBI’s two available jets and had given an order to hold the other for another team that would not normally respond to the scene, according to the whistleblower and the sources. The evidence response team instead had to drive through the night amid a snowstorm to reach the university in Providence, Rhode Island, by 9 o’clock the next morning, according to the whistleblower’s account.

Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the ranking member on the Senate Judiciary Committee, shared other remarkable claims from the FBI whistleblower, including that the FBI’s shooting-reconstruction team was delayed a day in getting to the scene of Charlie Kirk’s assassination because of a plane-and-pilot shortage caused by Patel’s personal flights. He also shared an alleged claim Patel made at an FBI field office meeting: “If you have golf, hockey, fishing, or hunting and beautiful sights, you’re going to see a lot of me.”

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THE YOUTHS AND THE GROYPER: If you haven’t heard of Florida Republican gubernatorial candidate James Fishback, maybe the quickest way to get you up to speed is to say that our MAGA-internet reporter Will Sommer has written tons about him. As Will has observed, Fishback is perhaps the first real “groyper” candidate—which is to say, he hails from the loudly white-nationalist and racist fragment of the GOP that takes as their leader the podcaster Nick Fuentes. To track Fishback’s campaign is mostly to compile a list of his racist claims and campaign attacks and bizarre Twitter fights. He has implied that Jews are to blame for unhealthy school lunches and winkingly called his frontrunner opponent, Rep. Byron Donalds, a “slave to his donors.” (Donalds is black.)

Fishback isn’t making much of a dent in Donalds’s lead yet: A University of Northern Florida poll released yesterday found 31 percent of the GOP primary electorate siding with Donalds, compared to only 6 percent for Fishback. But among voters ages 18–34, those numbers are essentially flipped: 32 percent support Fishback, while only 8 percent support Donalds.

We’ll keep on saying it: The GOP kids aren’t alright.

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Cheap Shots

1. Last night Trump announced that the women’s team would visit the White House, though it’s not clear whether the team has accepted an invitation, and if so, how many of the athletes plan on attending.

2. The FBI director reimburses the government for any personal trips he takes with the jet—but only for the amount it would have cost him to get a single coach seat on a commercial airline making a comparable trip. Obviously, taking the FBI jet costs a bit more.