The NPR Politics Podcast - Key takeaways from President Trump's State of the Union address

Episode Date: February 25, 2026

President Trump delivered his first State of the Union address of his second term Tuesday night. We break down what he said, what his political messaging was, and how it previews the administration's goals through the midterm elections. We also analyze how the Democrats responded.This episode: senior White House correspondent Tamara Keith, congressional reporter Sam Gringlas, senior political editor & correspondent Domenico Montanaro, and senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson.This podcast was produced and edited by Casey Morell & Bria Suggs.Our executive producer is Muthoni Muturi.Special thanks to Kelsey Snell, Natalie Winston and Neil Tevault.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

Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett.org. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And we are in your feeds a little bit later than usual, we stayed up to hear President Trump give his first state of the union address of this second term. The White House went into tonight promising a speech that would celebrate President Trump's victories,

elevate the stories of American heroes, and offer an agenda for the future. Over a record-breaking one hour and 48 minutes, he presented a vision of the country that was in need of saving, from the economy to immigration and culture wars. But tonight, after just one year, I can say with dignity, and pride that we have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages. It is indeed a turnaround for the ages. I want to ask you Domenico and Mara, in one word, how would you describe the speech? In one word, Peel. In other words, Norman Vincent Peel, which is power of positive thinking, the pastor who Donald Trump grew up listening to,

because the idea here is that the economy and is something that a lot of people have been saying is not good. And yet here's Donald Trump turning around and saying the country is in the midst of a turnaround. His poll numbers are at a nadir of this second term in office. You know, in many respects, there should be a five-alarm fire for his presidency. And instead he's saying, again, with dignity and pride, achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before, boasted of a soaring stock market, gas prices coming down. And yet, people aren't saying that's what they're feeling. Sort of a mission accomplished moment there. Mara, are you going to have better luck at coming up with one word? Standard. It was a standard Trump speech. Sometimes when presidents

are sinking in the polls the way Donald Trump is and majorities of Americans think he has not brought the kind of change they want, presidents try something new. Donald Trump did not try something new. This is what we've heard from him before, that things are great, that he inherited a country that was a complete mess, as he says it was a dead country, now it's the hottest country. And it remains to be seen if this is going to work in a state of the union address when it hasn't worked in all the other speeches and talks that he's given about how well he's done. Voters aren't buying it. Now, maybe this long speech will change their minds, but I think that would be unlikely. Yeah, and the White House is promising he's going to take the show on the road

delivering this midterm message all over the country. Sam, you were in the room tonight, in the house chamber. There were a lot of things that listening and watching here in the studio, it was a little hard to tell what was happening, but it seems like there were some back and forths happening. Yeah, there were some back and forth, but overall, I would say this was about what you would expect. You know, we know this country is so divided. politically. And I think that was really just on full display in the chamber tonight. There were just very few lines where we saw Republicans and Democrats standing and clapping together on really anything. And then something else that stood out to me is, you know, we spend a lot of time covering tensions

between the Congress, the executive branch, the Supreme Court. And this is one of those few moments where you actually get to see all of those folks in the same room. And we had this moment where, you know, President Trump is criticizing the recent Supreme Court decision on. on tariffs, and you've got four of those justices sitting stoneface just a few feet away. And so I think this kind of encapsulates the moment that we're in in Washington right now and in the country. Domenico, President Trump has a way with his State of the Union addresses that there's a production value to it.

And that certainly happened tonight as he was talking about winning, about, you know, the winning so much that you'll be tired of winning. Let's hear a little bit of that. Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much.

We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country until you came along. We're just always losing, but now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no. no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. I'd like to meet the person who had that conversation with President Trump. It seems to me that he has this artifice that he creates, this framework often about these kinds of stories that

people are saying to him, generals saying, sir, can't believe they're crying. They want to kiss him. This is a, you know, it's a thing that he does for the flair of the dramatic in saying that it's real. But clearly, look, this is what Trump is about, right? I mean, it's about quote unquote winning. And I say quote unquote, not because it's the quote that he's saying, but because it doesn't matter if you're actually winning. It matters if you're presenting it to people in a way where you're winning the argument about potentially winning or not. And of course, in that moment when he was talking about winning and building and building, then he introduced the men's ice hockey team, the USA men's ice hockey team that truly, literally did just win at the Olympics. And the first time in 46 years that the U.S. men's hockey team, since the miracle on ice team in 1980, had won the gold medal, certainly quite the moment that captured the country. So why not, right?

When you're a president who is facing. some really negative feelings, some baked in negative feelings from voters across the country, you know, why not try to get some of that Olympic gold to maybe rub off on you and do it in the first half hour of your speech before people turn it off? And fall asleep because it was very late at night. Well, yeah, but don't remember. Don't forget they're not watching the speech. They're going to see snippets of the speech tomorrow. And I don't know what was the viral moment out of this speech.

It's hard to pick one. I thought he did make a little news. He pretty much told Republicans he's not going to ask them to walk the plank and vote for these new tariffs under a different legal authority. And I'm sure they're pretty happy about that. Yeah. You know, Sam, as we're talking about Congress, he, you know, I've watched many state of the union addresses over the years. And often the president comes in and he's got this laundry list of things that he wants Congress to do. President Trump's list was short in terms of what he actually says he wants Congress, this Republican-controlled Congress to do.

Do you think that they're going to be able to accomplish even that short list? I mean, I think the chances are probably slim or zero. But, you know, this has been really the through line of so many of the stories we've covered about this Congress since Congress passed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last summer. it's really turned to relinquishing so much authority to the executive branch and Congress really taking a back seat, whether it's on the subsidies or these talks about ICE reform right now. You know, President Trump is in the driver's seat and Congress is not really doing much to stand in the way or even being asked to do much to help further this agenda, especially as we're getting so close to the midterms. And people are turning to thinking about their re-election bids and less about the action that's happening every day here in the House and the Senate. I counted. And he didn't ask them to get rid of the filibuster to pass the SAVE Act, one of the very few pieces of legislation he wants to get through. And the SAVE Act just that struck out of me.

And the SAVE Act, just so people know, would require ID for voting, but also proof of citizenship to vote, which is where Democrats, that was one of many moments where Republicans were standing and Democrats were sitting down. I counted roughly half a dozen substantive asks to Congress. And they're not the kinds of things that you would assume. associate with a major legislative agenda. And to Sam's point, you know, this has been a president who has gone about in this last year consolidating power in the White House. The things that I heard him ask for were things like codifying his most favored nation's, you know, drug prices, about lowering drug prices. I'm not exactly sure how Congress would do that. He talked about the Stop Insider Trading Act.

The Delilah Law, which he coined about no commercial licenses for immigrants in the country without permanent legal status. He said he wants a full and immediate restoration of funding for the Department of Homeland Security and to somehow have that help clean up snow, which is not part of Department of Homeland Security's budget. And as Mara mentioned, the Save America Act, which is intended for all voters to have to show not just ID, but proof of citizenship before being able to vote. Can we just pause on the fact that right now there is a partial government shutdown,

that the Department of Homeland Security lacks funding right now. There are people, you know, TSA agents and others who are working without pay until something is resolved. President Trump mentioned that briefly, as Domenico says, he called for the restoration of Homeland Security funding. but I didn't really get any sense of a path to any sort of compromise or a path out of this shutdown. Sam, what did you hear? Yeah, I mean, this was a fleeting mention, as you said, and I think part of it might be that this is the third government shutdown that we are in the middle of in just the last couple of months. So I wonder if it kind of starts to lose its luster once they pile up. But I think the reality also is that negotiations really aren't going anywhere.

In the early days, we had Democrats and Republicans, trading offers back and forth. But a lot of that has really slowed down. And we've seen almost no visible signs of any progress towards some of these reforms related to the tactics of federal immigration officers after these two deadly shootings in Minneapolis. And this really follows a cycle that we've seen on several issues in this Congress that there is a national crisis, a number of Republicans and Democrats say that they're going to do something about it. then the talks inevitably fizzle. And that seems to be the posture that we're in right now and doesn't look like that's going to change anytime soon. Mara, President Trump, celebrated Olympic gold medals. He handed out major presidential honors. He awarded a Purple Heart, a presidential medal of freedom, the Legion of Honor, Legion of Merit Award. You know, the State of the Union is not

typically the venue where these things happen. What is President Trump hoping to accomplish with these awards and these moments? I think he's trying to make this set piece event more watchable. That's it. I think he's putting in some drama, ordinary people getting rewarded for extraordinary acts. He's trying to keep the audience. I mean, I don't think there's anything necessarily wrong with it. I don't know how all the awarding of medals will help him convince voters that prices are coming down.

But it's all part of the show. And he cares a lot about showmanship. You could make the argument that Joe Biden didn't care enough about it. Okay, let's take a quick break, and we will have more in a moment. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet, more information is available at Hewlett.org. And we're back. Let's talk a little bit about the Democrats here. You know, there's always a

response from the opposition party after the state of the union addresses. Tonight's came from Abigail Spanberger, the first woman elected governor of Virginia. And she talked a lot about affordability. Since this president took office last year, his reckless trade policies have forced American families to pay more than $1,700 each in tariff costs. There was no denying Mara what her message was. She just kept coming back to it. This was the most relentless on-message response to a state of the union address I have ever heard. It was successful by the criteria that the Democratic Party would apply to this speech. She gave a very clear message, which boils down to the president, made your life,

less affordable, and it wasn't even legal. You know, the tariffs weren't even legal. She asked over and over again, is the president working for you? It was very clear. I think she did herself some good. A lot of times the people who are chosen to give these responses, sometimes they flub them, and that's kind of the end of their career.

But I think this one serves Spanberger very well. She talked about herself. She talked about all the victory she's won in Virginia and how she flipped seats by 17 points. But she kept on coming back to the fact that Donald Trump hasn't helped you and doesn't even seem to care about helping you. You know, he left them Democrats an opportunity and an opening here because he didn't talk about the warts in the economy and that left it wide open for Abigail Spamberger to do what she did

and essentially, talk about Standard, reused her message from the campaign where she just won as governor in November to talk about her message on the economy and to appear reasonable and normal, right? That was sort of the entirety of her campaign. But I have to say when it comes to Democrats, the other part of this is that the Democratic response spans from Abigail Spanberger to the Al Greens and Elon Omar's, and Al Green being Congressman, Elon Omar, Congresswoman from Minnesota. And they're far more boisterous when it comes to their response to Trump. You know, Al Green holding up signs, Elon Omar tonight, shouting at the president at different times. And that's maybe not something Democrats are going to have to worry about

in 2026 because it's still Trump's world for better or worse for him in the Republican Party. But they are going to have to deal with it when it comes to primary voting in 28. You know, Domenico makes a really important point here. Usually when presidents have an approval rating as low as President Trump does, and they know that affordability is the most important issue in the campaign and voters feel that prices are too high. Usually, in addition to trying to point out all the wonderful things they've done to get prices down, they try to relate to people and say, you know what, we have more work to do. I understand the pain of people trying to pay their bills because prices are higher for this product or this product. But he didn't do that at all.

Yeah, the I feel your pain message. Yeah, he doesn't feel he needs to do that at all. Did we hear a preview of the midterms of the messaging of the year ahead? Well, certainly for Democrats we did. This was the Democratic message. Just hit over the head like a two by four. I mean, she delivered the Democratic message, I think, loud and clear. And I think we heard a Republican message, too. It's the same one that Donald Trump has been running on except the inverse is happened with the economy, right? He's not any longer the challenger who's saying prices are. high and you need me to fix it. He was continuing to talk about immigration, deporting criminals, and talking about crime in the country, having been rampant and now being in his, you know, in the way that he talks about it, fixed. And that's the real piece that sort of hobbles Trump is the economy because he's not able to use that as something to run on, which really won him,

independence and persuadable voters. And we've seen them slide away from. him heavily in polling, probably because of that as well, because they rate that as their top issue still. And he's hoping, again, that immigration is going to be the thing that helps Republicans over the finish line, some of these culture war issues when it comes to trans rights as well. He's always said, remember, that immigration he feels is really his juice. It's the thing that he felt got him over the finish line, even if exit polls said differently. And he might be right. He has a lot of time now to pull back. He's pulled back National Guard troops from these places. Maybe he won't have had any more videos of American citizens being shot.

You know, he has made a tactical retreat, and that might help him return to the parts of his immigration agenda that are popular, a secure border and deporting criminals who are undocumented immigrants. Sam Greenglass, Democrats were certainly a subject of President Trump's speech. I think he was expecting them to shout in the room, which they obliged on. And he really went after them directly and repeatedly, including when they didn't stand up to cheer or when they protested. Here's this. These people are crazy, I'm telling you. They're crazy.

We should say that that line, the crazy line, was in the prepared version of his remarks. But Sam, how is it received in the room? Well, I should just say, like, this is why Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries was telling his members, if you're going to come, do it in silent, define. not by trying to make these boisterous protests because it plays right into this line that we just heard from the president that Democrats are crazy. They're at a line. And we did see a little of that. There was some shouting and mouthing words back and forth to the president, you know, things about, you know, the shootings of Alex Prattie and Renee Good. It's on video. They're killing Americans. Some Democrats were shouting back at him. Someone held up a sign with their pictures on one side and the other. But overall, we saw most Democrats. sitting there in stone cold silence with stern looks on their face throughout this night. And I think this also highlights the divide in the party about how to approach this president headed into the midterms. And as we wind down our coverage, Mara, I'm wondering what you're watching for next or sort of what closing thoughts you might have.

Well, I'm interested in seeing what the public's reaction to this address is. I mean, it was a standard Trump address. It didn't seem to really meet the moment of voters being very concerned. about the cost of health care and groceries and education. So I'm really interested to see how this will be received. And Domenico? Well, you know, this midterm messaging, I think, is really important. How do people view what Trump has said?

But I think we know the answer. The views of Trump have been very baked in, as our pollsters have said, and has been that way for quite some time. We saw a little bit of movement where independents and Latinos and some younger voters moved over to Trump to vote for him. during the 2024 presidential election, mostly because of prices in the economy. And now we've seen them sort of slide away. And these numbers for Trump continuing to be where they've seemingly always been, anywhere

from the high 30s to the low 40s when it comes to his approval rating. And this midterm election is very much going to be a referendum on President Trump. Yeah, I did notice that Abigail Spanberger in her response just kept coming back to President Trump. She wasn't talking about Republicans in Congress, even though they're the ones who are going to be on the ballot. Yeah, absolutely. And she knows the power of that. She's tested the message in a state that used to be a swing state in Virginia, now leans a little bit more blue, but certainly has that kind of more moderate sounding message. And there's a lot of Democrats who are going to be sitting there saying, you know, maybe in those swing districts sound a little bit more like Abigail Spamberger than an Al Green. But, you know, we're going to see how people wind up positioning their campaigns. As Trump has said himself, though, midterm elections are not kind to the party in power. He's said that it's both Democrats and Republicans in effect, and it really is a bit of pushing a boulder up the hill, especially when people have a negative view of the direction of the country. All right. That does it for us tonight.

We will be back in your feeds later today at this point at our usual time. So be sure to hit the follow button in your preferred podcast app to make sure you hear our episodes as soon as they're in the feed. I'm Tamara Keith. I cover the White House. I'm Sam Greenglass. I cover Congress. I'm Domenico Montanaro, senior political editor and correspondent. And I'm Mara Liason, senior national political correspondent. And thank you for listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Support for NPR and the following message come from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Investing in creative thinkers and problem solvers who help people, communities, and the planet flourish. More information is available at Hewlett. org.