Reaction Podcast: Trump Goes Long
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Hello and welcome to this late night Address to Congress reaction edition of the FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast.

It's a quarter past midnight and we have wrapped up watching President Trump's address to the joint session of Congress, as well as Alyssa Slotkin's reaction, Democratic response to that address. I will also say that perhaps like you, during the address, we got some news related to FiveThirtyEight's future or read news about FiveThirtyEight's future.

We have not heard anything formally yet. At the beginning of this night, we set out to watch the address to Congress and the reaction and record a podcast afterwards. And so that's what we're going to do. You know, we will update you with what we know when we know it. But in this moment, we're going to do what we've been doing for a little over nine years and rewatch.

record a FiveThirtyEight Politics podcast. And here with me to do that are none other than senior elections analyst Nathaniel Rakich. Welcome to the podcast, Nathaniel. Hey, Galen. It's great to be here with you. Also here with us is former FiveThirtyEight colleague Mary Radcliffe. Welcome back to the podcast, Mary. I'm so glad you made time for us this late Tuesday. No, it's early Wednesday morning. Yeah.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. I was excited to get the chance to come hang out and talk about the fake State of the Union with y'all. The fake State of the Union. Truly the best kind.

And in this case, the longest address of its type in American history. I was going to start by asking you both what stuck out to you, but I know the answer was going to be just how long it was. So it was an hour and 40 minutes long, which breaks the record. And I looked up the average person

State of the Union plus fake State of the Union speaking times for all of the presidents going back to LBJ. So Donald Trump now holds the record and

Previously, what was his average during his first four years as president? What was his average speaking time during the State of the Union? His were always kind of long, right? I would say either he or Bill Clinton probably had the longest average speech times because they're kind of known. I bet Bill Clinton has the longest average, but I bet Trump's is over an hour. He had the longest. The record that Trump broke tonight was Bill Clinton's, which was an hour and 29 minutes, his final State of the Union address in 2000.

I'm going to say that Trump's average in his first term was an hour, 15 minutes. I will take the under. Ooh, okay. Well, then Nathaniel has it because the average was exactly an hour, 20 minutes and 20 seconds. Wow. That is high. An average that is just nine minutes shy of the record. Yeah.

You were right about Bill Clinton being up there. His average across all eight years was an hour, 14 minutes and 51 seconds. Now I'm going to ask you about the fun ones. Who spoke the least going back to LBJ during their State of the Unions on average?

I feel like the older, probably the speeches have generally been getting longer over time. So...

And I feel like maybe LBJ is maybe like to talk a little bit. So I'm going to say Nixon or maybe Ford. I'm going to say Ford, actually. Wait, I have a question. In the years where presidents delivered the address in writing and not in person, that's not counted in the average, right? That's not counted in the average. That was before LBJ, right? No, Nixon did that. Oh, did he? He only did it once. He only did it once.

Well, but I was just going to say, if that is an average of zero minutes. Right. It's not an average of zero minutes. It's not counted. I was actually also going to say Nixon and then Nathaniel said it, but I'm going to trust. No, he said Ford. He said Ford. I think I'm going to go with Ford. Oh, good. Okay. Then I'll take Nixon. And Mary gets it. It is Richard Nixon with an average of 35 minutes and 26 seconds. Brisk.

That is just a little bit shorter than Jimmy Carter at 36 minutes and 53 seconds. Needless to say, it was a long speech. So there was a lot to cover if you managed to pay attention to all of it. So besides the length, Mary, what stuck out to you the most? I mean, I think, you know, I'm looking at my notes here and it,

it seems like of that hour and 40 minutes, a pretty significant chunk was devoted to economic issues, which I thought was pretty interesting because when you look at the public opinion polling, that seems to be one of Trump's weak areas. And he didn't seem to be addressing these issues in a way that would assuage the concerns of the American people. He spent a lot of time talking about

the need for tariffs, as we have seen in the past few days and in the polling, that this is not particularly popular with the American people. It's not particularly popular with stock investors. It seems like kind of a big mess. And he spent a really long time focused on that issue. So I'm not sure that was maybe the best strategic move for him. But that's really where I think he spent the most of his speech.

Well, to that end, he mentioned tariff or tariffs 19 times. He mentioned tax or taxes 17 times. So up there on both of them, obviously, he's talking about tax cuts and he ran through all the different kinds of tax cuts that he wants to pass through the

the Congress, including taxes on tips and on Social Security payments. But on one hand, you might think, well, because Trump's position on tariffs with regards to Canada and Mexico in particular are not popular, he's got to explain himself. You know, he's got to give his pitch to the American public if he wants to try to win people over. Now,

in this partisan polarized environment. Will that be successful? Even if he does, you know, deliver a persuasive message, TBD. But Nathaniel, you're nodding along. Right. Yeah. I was going to say, I think it's different because we're not in campaign mode, right? This isn't September of an election year when I agree it would be silly for him to spend a lot of time and say a debate talking about an issue that would be weak for him. But

He is not up for reelection ever again. And his task right now basically is to sell this agenda that he could always run for governor of Florida. That's a good point. He could do that. He is eligible to do that. But no, but he his goal right now is to sell this agenda that he is clearly selling.

all in on to the American people. And this is the biggest platform as much as we like to poo poo State of the Union addresses, they don't matter because, you know, approval ratings don't usually shift after them. And you're usually preaching to the choir because it's the party of the president, you know, only their voters basically tune in and stuff like that. But it is still the biggest kind of platform of its kind and still gets millions of viewers. So I think the

that in that case, it made sense. And certainly, obviously, the tariffs were a huge news story today with the stocks plunging on the actual going into effect of those tariffs on Mexico and Canada. So I think it made sense, but I agree. It was notable to hear him like really doubling down on it. Yeah, at one point, I actually wrote in my notes this quote that with respect to tariffs, he's talking about sort of the experiences of the American people. He said, quote, there will be a little disturbance, quote,

But we're okay with that. And that was very striking to me because it's not at all clear to me, based on the public opinion polling, that Americans are okay with that little disturbance. I think Americans feel pretty disturbed already by high prices and inflation. So for him to just lay that very clearly out there feels risky. And to that point, Mary, as we sat down to record this podcast, something...

happened, a sort of landmark in the honeymoon period of Donald Trump's second term, which is that his approval rating formally flipped in the 538 averages. So now Donald Trump is net negative zero.

0.3 percentage points in terms of his approval rating, which is some indication of how the public has reacted to all of this so far. I should say here that his disapproval has increased significantly more than his approval has dropped since he

came into office. But Mary, you were talking about sort of his strong points and his weak points. What's underneath all of that? What do you make of that flip happening right now? Yeah, I mean, that's his overall approval rating. And I think it's really important to like think in context, you know, talking about the economy versus the overall approval rating. There's something very different going on here. Americans are pretty okay with some of the other, you

Actions the Trump administration has taken to this point generally are supportive of the actions he's taken with respect to gender and transgender issues, generally supportive of

with some limitation of the actions he's taken with respect to immigration. But when you look at the economy, cost of living, all of that stuff, that's where he's really underwater. And I think the events of the last week have really underscored that. So, for example, in a Reuters Ipsos poll that was just out Tuesday afternoon, his approval on handling cost of living was underwater by 23 percentage points, 31 to 54. That's extraordinary. Yeah.

And that is the top issue to the American people. So I think as the administration is taking more actions that are going to impact this top issue on which Trump's approval rating is very low, I think you're probably going to see continued decline in that overall approval rating. And they're focusing a lot of attention on, I

I don't know what you might call extracurricular activities, things that did not feature highly in Americans priorities during the campaign and maybe weren't even necessarily what they had in mind when they thought of a second Trump campaign.

term and Doge in particular comes to mind. Obviously, there was talk about government efficiency and waste, fraud and abuse. But some of the specifics I think people might be a little surprised by. And Democrats are obviously trying to highlight that by featuring veterans who were laid off from their federal jobs. There was also one remarkable point during this fake State of the Union address where I actually felt like Donald Trump was trying to steal my job.

He listed so many numbers in a 15 minute stretch of

I was like, did his speechwriter never hear the maximum audio that you can't just list numbers? You have to actually tell a story with them. And it was like, he was describing things that were so sort of bizarre or outlandish that he did capture my attention. He was talking about transgender mice and he was talking about, you know, basically, you know,

money that he was saying was used to promote LGBTQIA in Lesotho and male circumcision in another country. And it was quite the list of things that he was saying that Doge was cutting from the federal budget. But it was really just like a list of numbers that I haven't quite heard in a State of the Union like address before. Yeah, but I mean, Trump does that, right? Like he talks about polling numbers. He talks about

His electoral vote count, all this. Trump, do you really just want my job? Do you really just want to host the Five for Day Politics podcast? It would certainly be a very interesting show. Okay, so it seems like Trump is facing some challenges on the economy.

He also seems to get some support on immigration and culture war issues. He also talked about Ukraine. He also talked about some other culture war stuff like DEI. He talked about Matt McKinley and the Gulf of America. Yeah, that one I will say, right? I think there are two...

in which you can talk about unpopular things, right? One is you can try to really defend, like the tariffs are something that Americans are going to hear about all the time, right? Because they are affecting the economy and it's a big deal. And like that makes sense for him to defend

defend. The Gulf of America thing is like one of his most unpopular policies. Mary might know the number better than I do, but like it was something like 20% of Americans supported this. I know the number. Okay, there you go. Please give it to me, Galen. It was 35% strongly or somewhat approved to 52%

strongly or somewhat oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to Gulf of America. Interesting, because the poll I am thinking of was even lower. It was something like 70% opposed, 20-something percent. This is a Harris X poll, by the way. I don't remember who the pollster was. You go polling, I think probably is even more sour on...

on it. And look, also down there is dismantling the Department of Education, just to say that about the Doge stuff. Yes, yes. But anyway, but my point is that like, that's the kind of thing that like, obviously, like it was like a one time thing and like, isn't really affecting a lot of Americans lives. And like, honestly, with everything else that's going on, maybe a lot of Americans forgot about that. And for him to bring it up twice, I believe, as an applause line was, was probably a politically bad choice.

But I mean, not if what you think is the audience for something like that are your co-partisans, right?

You got the USA chanting in the audience. You got the Gulf of America. Yeah, but even in polling, like a lot of Republicans, if not depending on the poll, a majority of Republicans oppose renaming the Gulf of Mexico to the Gulf of America. So it's not even that popular among his base. It was interesting, though, that there was still basically unanimous standing ovation for that among the Republicans in the chamber. So obviously, there's perhaps a...

Who was Trump speaking to? Was he just trying to, you know, have fun in the room or was he actually thinking about the American people? Yeah. And at points he did seem like he was having fun. I forgot to mention, speaking of being in the room, Nathaniel, you were there in the room. Yeah.

What did you notice? Yeah, I mean, you know, perhaps that is a it's a reflection of the fact that I was in the room. I was seated above Trump, so I couldn't actually see him during the speech, but I could see the audience. And particularly I was on the Democratic side, so I particularly had a good view of the Democrats. But I mean, my main takeaway was.

was all of those interruptions and kind of the Democratic reaction to the speech. Obviously, you know, it feels like a long time ago because the speech was so long. But at the very beginning of the speech, you had Representative Al Green of Texas. All the way at the beginning of Donald Trump's speech so long ago. Yep. Yep. It was about two hours ago. Yep.

It's like 100 years ago.

And that was a pretty extraordinary moment. But at the same time, it was also kind of a continuation of what we've seen in recent State of the Union addresses. Last year, we had Marjorie Taylor Greene getting into a shouting match, basically, with Joe Biden on the podium about Lakin Riley and saying her name. If you want to go all the way back to Joe Wilson, who shouted, you lie at Barack Obama during, I think, his 2009 speech. But we have seen these

speeches get testier and testier over time, which obviously reflects the heightened temperature of our politics. And in addition to Al Green, you had a lot of Democrats who didn't get kicked out, but there were Democrats saying, and they weren't standing up and shouting, but they were saying quite audibly, like, lies or not true, or they were chanting January 6th at one point. So there was a lot of interaction there. And I thought that was pretty extraordinary and

Again, just kind of a marker. You know, I think it is easy for pundits to focus on the spectacle of these speeches and not the substance. But at the same time, I think that that actually really is remarkable and an important part of telling the history of

This speech in the Trump presidency in this era that as norms fall to the side, so does quite literally decorum. Yeah, I think there's also something interesting. You know, you mentioned Nathaniel, the spectacle of this whole thing. And I think there's something interesting also about Trump.

understanding something of the spectacle of this thing, right? So aside from the theatrics you see on the opposition side, you also saw Trump really embracing the showmanship that he could bring to this, doing stuff we've never seen before. You know, he gave a kid with terminal cancer an honorary Secret Service badge. He accepted an aspiring young person to West Point. He presented an executive order. Mm-hmm.

in front of the body. So I thought, I mean, I thought there was sort of this very visceral, we are clearly on TV thing happening on both sides of the aisle. There was also this moment

early on where he pointed to Democrats and basically said, you're going to sit here the entire time and you're never going to cheer for me. If even if I did the greatest things for America, you would never cheer. And this is something we know to expect from state of the union addresses that the opposition is not going to applaud all of the things that the people they disagree with are proposing. But he sort of called it out and basically said, you're being petty.

like to try to disempower what like little opportunity Democrats did have to be the opposition to not applaud and the like. Obviously, Al Green did take his moment to oppose the president. There's been a lot of talk about Democratic voters feeling as though their lawmakers in Congress aren't doing enough and they want to see more pushback.

We saw a little bit of pushback, or at least what the pushback message could look like. They had signs that said Musk steals, false, just calling out lies. What other signs were they holding up? It was like preserve Medicaid or something like that, and then protect veterans.

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Another opportunity that Democrats had to showcase what their opposition to Trump 2.0 might look like was the response to Trump's address. And that was delivered by Alyssa Slotkin, the newly elected senator from Michigan. Now, Nathaniel, I know that you were commuting back home from

from the Hill while she was delivering that response. So I won't ask you to comment on what she said, but you are familiar with her as an electoral player in Michigan and how she performs or I should say overperforms the partisanship of her state. Is that why Democrats chose her? Was it the ever-present electability play for Democrats in the Trump era? Yeah, exactly. I think it is generally that way.

vibe that she gives off. She is one of these kind of national security-minded women who ran for Democrats for the House in 2018, along with people like Abigail Spanberger, Mikey Sherrill, Alaine Luria. And she is

Yeah, really did very well in her swing House district for three terms and then ran for Senate, winning, of course, in Michigan, a narrow open seat race, even as Donald Trump was carrying the state at the same time. So she is kind of a demonstrated over performer. She's got that crossover appeal. She is.

On the moderate side, if you had to pick moderate versus progressive, but she's also I think she's fairly mainstream kind of liberal in the middle of the party, you know, isn't necessarily going to offend somebody. It's not like you're picking somebody from the far left or from the real core center of the party. But yeah, I think she's just a very effective message or in a time when Democrats want to project power.

strength and a reasonable opposition to Trump. And according to Split Ticket's recent analysis, she was one of the biggest overperformers in the last election. So her wins above replacement score was Democrat plus 1.3 percentage points. So overperforming Democrats by about a point and a half in

Well, I mean, I think most politicians don't want to give the response to the State of the Union or the fake State of the Union.

This is a pretty thankless job where you will only be remembered or noted if you screw it up in some kind of a way. Or if you look like you're somehow being held hostage at a kitchen table. Yeah. Or, you know, you're referring, of course, to Alabama Senator Katie Britt, who gave the response last year, who was a little, um...

But I'll be bipartisan in my criticism here. Do you remember when Stacey Abrams gave her reaction to the State of the Union address, which was also panned? I think it was very like she was on a stage with a bunch of, was it children, people, and she started by wishing people a happy Lunar New Year. It was very strange. This is why nobody wants to do this job. It's very difficult to do. I know we all remember Marco Rubio drinking a bottle of water one time. So anyway, Elizabeth.

Alyssa Slotkin did fine. She didn't screw up in any meaningful way. Her delivery was clear. It was very concise. It was a cool drink of water to listen to this very short speech after an hour and 40 minutes of the previous speech. The focus was really on democracy, rule of law, and not in a way that felt to me extraordinarily partisan. It felt like

Right. And as a former employee of the CIA, she really has this credibility on this issue. And it really just sounded like...

We're Americans doing America stuff. And it felt pretty innocuous to me. Yeah. And she also talked about prices a good amount as well. I think Democrats know that that's one of their biggest tickets to ride if ironically, as it was as it was for Trump. Isn't it funny how that works?

American politics is just the practice of recycling things like over and over and over again. Is it not?

Yeah. Like every time an outsider comes along, you're like, oh, an outsider, like an outsider. I've seen this show before. Well, you know, Trump in the address blamed the Biden administration for the inflation crisis and folks dealing with high prices. And he might be able to get away with that right now because he's been in office for whatever. What is it like 40 days or something like that?

I didn't count. I didn't do the math. You're close. I'm guessing. But he can't do that forever. Eventually, it's going to be his issue. He's going to have to own it. And the American people are not going to be super forgiving, probably. Well, and also to that point, it does take time usually for voters to say like, OK, you now own the economy, new president, or you now own our foreign entanglements, new president. But because Democrats

Donald Trump, for better or for worse, and I think in some cases it's for better, is seen as, in the public's perspective, is seen as doing so much stuff. I think that people are therefore going to attribute things like foreign relations and the economy to him more quickly because they see tariffs and blowups in the Oval Office with Zelensky and, you know, all of this different just

I'm putting this in quotes, stuff that Trump is doing, they're going to say, OK, well, he owns it now. He's the one in control. Yeah. And to that, I was looking for polling that was trying to get at this issue of like Trump is doing a lot of stuff. How do you feel about that? And I got

find exactly that, but I found something pretty close. So in a February poll from Marist, NPR and PBS News, they asked which statement people agreed with more about Trump's actions since returning to office. This is the end of February, so relatively recent. The two statements they were presented with were Donald Trump has been rushing to make changes without considering their impact or Donald Trump is doing what needs to be done to get the government on track.

And 56% of Americans agreed with the first statement more, that he's been rushing to make changes without considering their impact. So the very beginning of this so-to, which if you only tuned in for a little bit, you probably only saw the beginning, is this litany of stuff and stuff and stuff and stuff.

But it's not clear to me that the American people are going to feel good about that. And it may accelerate the timeline for Trump to take ownership of whatever is going on in the country and in the government. Right. We say he gets a little grace. This was Biden's economy. But if he is pushing through stuff after stuff after stuff, he may have to.

make it be Trump's economy sooner than later. Well, and one bright spot for him is encounters at the southern border. I mean, those have truly plummeted on his watch. The challenge, though, is that Americans don't

vote as a way of saying thank you. They more often vote as a way of saying screw you. And they'll quickly forget that immigration was such a problem when something else rises to the top, whether it is prices or egg prices or the stock market is crashing or layoffs or whatever it may be that capture people's focus next.

That will become the issue. They're not going to remember for years

years that they're really happy about what Trump did on that issue when he first got into office. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right, Galen. And I think another thing that is really interesting in that he he really did spend a lot of time kind of touting the accomplishments of his administration, even though it has been quite short, which isn't what you normally see in a State of the Union. I mean, maybe you see some of that, but normally State of the Unions, right, are about asking Congress to do stuff, right?

Right. And Trump has never really embraced this function of the State of the Union. So there is data from two political scientists, Donna Huffman and Alison Howard, who they go through every State of the Union address and log how many requests are made by the president of Congress. And Trump historically has not had many. He averaged less than 20 during his four State of the Union addresses during his first term. We don't have data on this one yet. Obviously, it just happened. But

It seemed to my ear that he did not make many requests of Congress, which is interesting given that we are coming up on a federal funding deadline that the government might shut down in two weeks. I thought that was notable given that, obviously, in the context of Trump really embracing the use of executive power and kind of deciding that

The executive branch is the only one that matters and brushing aside the legislative and judicial branches, which is certainly, I would say, the theme of his presidency thus far. He comes all the way to Congress's own house.

And doesn't even ask for all that much. What a nice, what a great house guest, you know? He asked for so little. Did he at least bring a bottle of wine? I know, he's a teetotaler, come on. Anyway, thank you so much, Nathaniel and Mary, for watching this Address to Congress and Response this evening with me and recording this podcast. We are going to leave it there for tonight. We're nearing on one o'clock tonight.

And Cameron still has to edit this. Godspeed, Cam. Thank you guys. Wouldn't have done it with anyone else. Thanks for having me. Thanks, Galen. It's been a pleasure. It truly has.

My name is Galen Druk. Our producers are Shane McKeon and Cameron Trotavian, and you can get in touch by emailing us at galen.druk at 538.com. You can also, of course, tweet at us with questions or comments. If you're a fan of the show, leave us a rating or review in the Apple Podcast Store or tell someone about us. Thanks for listening, and we will see you soon.