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<\/p>\nDonald Trump’s showmanship and supreme confidence can easily distract from the fact that the US president \u2014 whose approval rating is sitting at 39 per cent \u2014 had a lot riding on his State of the Union address today.<\/p>\n
His record-setting marathon was notable for its (relative) discipline. He (mostly) stuck to the script and the message. His tone was (relatively) benign rather than rambling, ranting and nasty.<\/p>\n
He did not go off script and tumble down one of his regular rabbit-hole issues for too long, or launch any sustained vicious attacks on those he sees as his adversaries.<\/p>\n
He spent the first hour on the economy and affordability issues, which are central to voters’ concerns. The real test of the success of his speech will be whether it did the political job of persuading voters things are better than they feel they are.<\/p>\n
Many of Trump’s economic claims were outlandish, or just lies.<\/p>\n
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Donald Trump delivers the State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the US Capitol. (Reuters: Kevin Lamarque)<\/p>\n
For example, he said his administration had “driven core inflation down to the lowest level in more than five years”. He said inflation was “plummeting” (it has eased a little bit overall since he took office).<\/p>\n
His claims of a historic economic turnaround sit uncomfortably with an annual growth rate of 2.2 per cent in 2025 compared to 2.8 per cent in 2024.<\/p>\n
Trump claimed that he had “the most people working in history”. But the percentage of people who were employed in January this year is exactly the same as it was in January last year.<\/p>\n
Five standout moments from Trump’s State of the Union speech<\/a><\/p>\n The president gave the longest State of the Union speech in US history, delivering a 108-minute address to shatter Bill Clinton’s 89-minute record.<\/p>\n The crucial bit, always, is not the actual numbers \u2014 or the fact checks \u2014 but the extent to which the picture a politician paints of the economy tallies with conditions that people are experiencing in their own lives.<\/p>\n The president’s heavy use of personal stories of people gathered in the galleries to persuade people watching at home of the value of his policies was striking.<\/p>\n And they would have been persuasive for many viewers not too concerned to scrutinise the details.<\/p>\n The speech highlighted how Trump’s “big beautiful tax cuts” are clearly seen as central to persuading voters that his administration and the Republicans contesting the midterm elections this year are directed right at the affordability issue.<\/p>\n Tariffs \u2014 so central to Trump’s economic and foreign policy strategies in the past year and notably struck down on Friday by the Supreme Court<\/a> \u2014 were claimed both as a foreign policy win (while they are actually now just the cause of global confusion and disruption) and a source of revenue (to be miraculously paid by foreign countries instead of Americans) that could single-handedly replace income taxes.<\/p>\n Loading…<\/p>\n Beyond the economy, the other political ship that Trump had to right in his State of the Union address was the immigration issue.<\/p>\n Stopping illegal immigration has always been a key factor in Trump’s political success. But the images of masked ICE agents and the killings of two US citizens in Minnesota<\/a> have soured many Americans’ views on this issue and Trump’s methods.<\/p>\n