The NPR Politics Podcast - Biden's Impassioned State Of The Union Speech

Episode Date: March 8, 2024

President Biden delivered a fiery State Of The Union Thursday night addressing immigration, aid for Ukraine and shrinkflation among other topics. But was it enough to rile up support amongst Democrats in a year when he is seeking re-election? This episode: political correspondent Susan Davis, national congressional correspondent Claudia Grisales, and political correspondent Mara Liasson. Our producers are Jeongyoon Han, Casey Morell & Kelli Wessinger. Our editor is Erica Morrison. Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi. Listen to every episode of the NPR Politics Podcast sponsor-free, unlock access to bonus episodes with more from the NPR Politics team, and support public media when you sign up for The NPR Politics Podcast+ at plus.npr.org/politics.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Hi, this is Millie in Warwick, England. I am just about to record my radio show where I love talking about American politics. This podcast was recorded at 11.34pm on Thursday, March 7th. But things may have changed by the time you hear it. Okay, here's the show. Well, do we have enough then to discuss for her and her podcast tonight? Exactly. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Liason, national political correspondent.

Mr. Speaker, the President of the United States. President Biden delivered the State of the Union address to Congress tonight, framing this moment as a pressure test for democracy. Now it's we who face some precedent moment in the history of the union. And yes, my purpose tonight is to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this is no ordinary moment either. Not since President Lincoln and the Civil War have freedom and democracy been under assault at home as they are today? Biden started right out of the gate with politically sharp and pointed language,

calling on Republicans in Congress to support aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia. Now, my predecessor, a former Republican president, tells Putin, quote, do whatever the hell you want. And he compared the need to defend Ukraine to the need to defend democracy here after the January 6th attack on the United States Capitol. My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about January 6th. I will not do that. This is the moment to speak the truth and to bury the lies. Here's the simple truth. You can't love your country only when you win. As I've done ever since being elected to office, I ask all of you without regard to party to join together and defend democracy. That pretty much set the tone for the rest of the night.

Mara, I have like a million questions to ask you, but I'm going to start very broad and just throw it to you and say, what are your takeaways? Well, I thought that one of his main goals was to show that he was vigorous and strong. His voice was strong. It wasn't a husky whisper. I think he definitely botched a couple lines. But in general, I think he did what he had to do performatively to assuage some of the deep worries among Democrats about his ability to conduct this campaign. He also has some interviews scheduled, national news interviews, which is a departure for him. But my biggest takeaway was right off

the block, he started with Ukraine. And the fact that he put that at the top and was so strong about it. And remember, a lot of people only watch the first couple of minutes of this, and that's what they're going to remember. And he said, Ukraine can stop Putin, but only if we help them. And he made a really strong contrast between him and the leader of the Republican Party, who not only doesn't want to help Ukraine with military weapons, has been really friendly to Vladimir Putin. I mean, the State of the Union address in a year where the incumbent president is running for re-election is inherently going to be a campaign speech. But tonight felt like it was different, more political than usual in how many times he invoked Donald Trump, and we should say not by name, only ever referring to him as my

predecessor, but he did throughout the course of his speech drawing that contrast. Yeah, I think he had to do that. I think that State of the Union addresses at the beginning of an election year are often pretty partisan. And this was no different. He tried to draw a contrast. That's what the whole campaign is about. I think that this tells you that he's ready to really take the fight to Trump. Claudia, you were in the room for the State of the Union. I feel like it's important to have someone in the chamber these days because it's so much more raucous for trying the State of the Union. I feel like it's important to have someone in the chamber these days because it's so much more raucous for during the State of the Union than it has been in the past. How was the speech received? I mean, clearly by Democrats, they loved it. You could hear the applause on television over and over. But among Republicans in the room, what was it like?

Right. It was an interesting evolution, as Mara was mentioning, starting off with Ukraine. It was this very bipartisan beat that President Biden was hitting in that moment. I saw members such as Don Bacon from Nebraska, a Republican, standing up, giving the president an ovation during that Ukraine segment of the speech. But less than an hour into the speech, Bacon put a post up on social media saying that it was a partisan political stump speech and not a dignified State of the Union address. I saw Republicans who were seemingly frustrated, and some even left, maybe about a dozen I counted during the course of the speech. One thing that it made me think about was some conversations I had with some Republican lawmakers before the speech. They were concerned about how Biden would come into the chamber. One member told me they thought Biden would come in swinging, and in other words, would beat Republicans down pretty bad. And so

those words were ringing in my ears throughout that speech, because as Biden built into those remarks, they were fiery, and he really hit back at Republicans on a number of areas. And it was difficult for them. And of course, as you mentioned, there was a back and forth with members such as Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, the Republican. And even at those points, it seemed that Biden seemed to enjoy and relish the back and forth as he did last year when that came up as well. Mara, substantively, I'm not sure that Biden offered many new policy ideas, but collectively, there did seem to be this vein of sort of angry populism that ran through his speech that I don't feel like I've heard from Biden in quite a coherent manner before.

Well, this was definitely an economic populist speech. I think economic populism has always worked for Democrats. He's a pro-union, bi-American guy. That's been a through line in his career. And all of the things that he talked about are things that the past couple of Democratic presidents have been for and that really the whole Democratic caucus in Congress is for, raising the corporate minimum tax to at least 21 percent, making sure that billionaires pay their fair share, protecting Social Security and Medicare, decreasing drug costs, all sorts of other things. I don't think that those are far left or even that they were so angry. I think for Biden, they came off as feisty. And what he wanted to communicate was, I am somebody who's going to fight for you, middle class families.

Claudia, last year, President Biden barely made reference to abortion rights. And this year, not just in the speech, but in the room, I think it was a striking contrast where many Democrats brought guests that related to the abortion rights fight, including in the first lady's box. They had Kate Cox, who was a woman from Texas who was denied abortion access. Biden seemed to lean into this. If you, the American people, send me a Congress that supports the right to choose, I promise you I'll restore Roe v. Wade as the law of the land again. Very clear that Democrats are making very clear that this is an issue that they're going to run on very hard in 2024. It was really remarkable how much he spoke about it and dedicated time to it this year. It's almost as if last year's speech was a regret for Democrats in that area, that they did not spend enough time talking about it, and they were able

to make up ground for that this year, not only by Biden's remarks, but as you mentioned, just simply in the chamber, you could see members of the Democratic Women's Caucus, for example, all wearing white. And this was their effort to try and communicate access to reproductive rights was going to be a key priority for Democrats. It will be in the face of opposition, they say, from Republicans. And so, as you mentioned, a lot of guests from Texas especially, we saw a lot of women who faced life-threatening health crisis because they could not get the care they needed because of the restrictions in that state. So it was really a big moment for the president and for Democrats to try and get that message out that we are on your side if you're looking for access to abortion, as well as diving into this debate over access to IVF as well. Mara, the president also spoke about the situation in Israel and worth noting that he recommitted his support to a two-state solution. Yes, he recommitted his support. He said it was the only way to solve this situation.

He also talked about building a pier. This is something that we don't think the Israeli government has agreed to, building a pier on the coast of Gaza so that humanitarian aid could get in. And he sent a pretty strong message to Israel. He said, of course, we support Israel, their right to defend themselves

after the horrendous attack on October 7th, but they have a responsibility to reduce civilian deaths. I don't know how far that will go to quiet the criticism of people in his own base, Arab American voters, young voters who are very, very critical of him over his support for Israel and, you know, could become a real problem in the election. Claudia, how did that land in the chamber? In those moments when the president was talking about Israel, was talking about Gaza, that was another moment where we saw Republicans at some points applaud or stand up. So there were some moments where we'd see applause from both sides of the chamber. And we should note, towards the end of the speech, Biden very clearly brought up the question of his age. I know it may not look like it, but I've been around a while. When you get to be my age, certain things become clearer than ever.

I know the American story. Again and again, I've seen the contest between competing forces in the battle for the soul of our nation. Between those who want to pull America back to the past and those who want to move America into the future. My lifetime has taught me to embrace freedom and democracy. Maura, Biden also made the point that when he was elected to the Senate, he was one of the youngest senators at the time. He was sometimes denied access into the elevators because people couldn't believe he was so young. The point being, age has always been an issue for him. Right. He says, in my career, I've been told I'm too young and I'm too old. You know, I thought this was a pretty good way to address it, you know, saying that

I've been around long enough to understand the true idea of America and that it's not about hate, anger, revenge, and retribution. Obviously, talking about Donald Trump, who has said famously, I am your retribution. And he said something that we're going to hear a lot from the campaign, my fellow Americans, the issue facing our nation isn't how old we are, it's how old our ideas are. You know, Trump wants to take us back, and I have a vision of going forward. So he waited till the very, very end to talk about his age. But I think this whole speech was about his age and the presentation was about it. And the performative aspects of the presidency have always been Biden's weakest. He's passed bipartisan legislation. He's led the Western alliance, you know, by the

traditional metrics of success by which we used to measure presidents to see how successful they were, could he get his agenda through Congress? And he got a lot of it through. But that's not the metric that voters are measuring him by. They want to know that he's fit and ready for a second term. I think they went a far way to show that he was. Okay, let's take a quick break and we'll talk about the Republican response when we get back. And we're back. And after every State of the Union, at least dating back to the 1960s, the party not holding the White House gets to issue a response to the president. Tonight, that response came from Katie Britt, a junior senator from Alabama. Right now, the American dream has turned into a nightmare for so many families. The true unvarnished state of our union begins and ends with this. Our families are hurting.

Our country can do better. It was pretty dark and, frankly, a bit bleak of a response. But Claudia, before we talk more about it, I think for a lot of our listeners, they don't really know who Katie Britt is. So can you sort of explain who she is? Right. This is a new senator from the state of Alabama. It was an interesting strategic choice by Republicans. I believe they picked a member of Congress, a younger member of Congress, to show quite the contrast after President Biden's speech. Clearly an age contrast. Exactly. Clearly an age contrast. And it's very interesting for us on the Hill, as you know, freshman members in the Senate often do not talk to the media. So it was an interesting time to

have her handle this rebuttal. It just showed the interest for Republicans to make sure they could show that delineation with their party, as well as at a very interesting moment for Alabama, because they are caught up in this controversy in terms of IVF. We know the state moved today to try and protect access to IVF, but that still has left Republicans scrambling to get on the same page when it comes to messaging and access to it. So she was there in some ways to try and address that controversy and say that that access is still there. And so trying to settle some of the concerns over the messaging that some Republicans have said in terms of IVF and perhaps blocking access in some cases. Yeah, it seemed pretty clear that she was trying

to do some political cleanup for the party on this IVF debate, and she spoke directly to it. We want families to grow. It's why we strongly support continued nationwide access to in vitro fertilization. We want to help loving moms and dads bring precious life into this world. Mara, one of the things that was striking to me about the tone of Senator Britt's speech was just how dark it was that essentially the American dream has become an American nightmare for people. And there wasn't a lot of hope or optimism in that speech. No, it was a real American carnage speech. It was very Trumpian. It spent a lot of time talking about the violence that illegal immigrants have perpetrated on innocent Americans. Her delivery

was extremely emotional. She sounded like she was on the verge of tears throughout this. Yeah. And what's really interesting to me about the response is, first of all, a lot of people don't pay attention to them. But they can be a career booster or killer depending on how they're received. And this – she is yet another young woman in the Republican Party who is adopting a kind of Trumpist approach and a view of America as extremely in decline. The American dream is gone. It's all Joe Biden's fault. And that's the Trump message. And she's on board with that. And it would be interesting to see what this speech does for her career inside the Republican Party. I have to say this, too, because she was in her home in Alabama and

she was sitting in her kitchen. And I understand the stagecraft on one hand, because it's the kitchen table issues of American families. And she kept on talking about her kitchen table. But at the same time, I also think the optics of a woman alone in the kitchen is the unintended visual of that to me was really striking. Like she is this woman in power. She's a rising star in the party. And like it was, there was just, it was really striking. Like she is this woman in power. She's a rising star in the party. And like it was there was just it was a choice. I know what they were trying to do with

it, but I can also see how that image could hit different, if you will. And she's an avatar or a representative of the voters that Trump is weakest with and needs to get suburban women, moms. The other thing I thought about tonight is that in both parties in the post Biden post Trump era, there is actually a lot of young rising star talent who have potential. And I was just thinking last year, Republicans also chose another young Southern Republican woman, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who's now the governor of Arkansas to give the rebuttal. It does just remind you that there is a world outside of Joe Biden and Donald Trump for both Republicans and Democrats.

And they're really keeping the lid on this whole new generation. I think it's going to be really interesting to see when those octogenarians leave the scene. Right. There's going to be a lot of competition for the next leaders. All right. Let's leave it there. But we'll be back in your feed later today with the Weekly Roundup. I'm Susan Davis. I cover politics. I'm Claudia Grisales. I cover Congress. And I'm Mara Eliason, national political correspondent. And thanks for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast.