Standing in nearly the exact same spot where Franklin Roosevelt had asked Congress to declare war on Japan after Pearl Harbor and where Lyndon Johnson had said he would have given all he had to not be saddled with the burden of the presidency after the assassination of John F Kennedy, President Donald Trump used his fifth appearance before a joint session of Congress to offer a vision of America where compromise isn’t needed and the opposing political party exists to be an object of ridicule and not a source of alternative ideas of how to govern.
Trump opened his nearly two-hour speech by describing his first weeks in office as “the most successful in the history of our nation,” eclipsing the first term of George Washington, the literal father of the country.
He listed a litany of putative successes including declaring a national emergency along the U.S.-Mexico border, deploying active duty troops there to repel non-white migrants, freezing federal hiring and rolling back regulations, and withdrawing the United States from a number of international agreements and organizations. He vowed to take more and more unilateral actions including imposing massive tax increases on a range of imports from American allies such as Mexico and Canada.
He also crowed about ordering federal workers back to the office, stopping what he described as “government censorship” in favor of “free speech” and ending “weaponized government” even as his appointees move to use the Justice Department to target Democratic members of Congress for years-old statements, as well as other executive actions to ban anti-discrimination and diversity programs that he and his allies believe are discriminatory against white people, while declaring that the U.S. “will be woke no longer.”
In between cheers of “U.S.A.” and chants of his name, Trump did acknowledge that it wasn’t just his Republican allies who were sitting in the chamber.
He complained that in his view, there was “nothing” he could say or do to make the Democrats sitting on the other side of the aisle “happy” or to “make them stand or smile or applaud” for him.
“I could find a cure to the most devastating disease, a disease that would wipe out entire nations or announce the answers to the greatest economy in history, or the stoppage of crime to the lowest levels ever recorded. And these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand, and certainly will not cheer for these astronomical achievements,” he said.
“They won’t do it no matter what … it’s very sad, and it just shouldn’t be this way,” he added before asking the Democrats in the chamber why they wouldn’t join their GOP colleagues in “celebrating so many incredible wins for America, for the good of our nation.”
But in truth, Trump isn’t interested in bringing Democrats along for the ride. He doesn’t want their support because his administration’s goal is to eliminate the party of FDR, JFK and LBJ as a political force.
His administration, through the Elon Musk-led “Department of Government Efficiency,” is laser-focused on attacking what they believe are Democratic power centers that artificially prop up the party even if it is out of power.
Specifically, the administration is targeting wide swaths of the civil service for reclassification in ways that will make it easier to fire federal workers who are seen as opposing the president’s agenda. And the president’s order to freeze federal spending and foreign aid is meant to target non-governmental organizations and government agencies such as USAID that they believe are staffed by Democrats who donate to Democratic political campaigns.
At the same time, they’re going after universities with threats of cutting off federal funds if they don’t adapt their hiring and teaching policies to be more friendly to Republicans, including by killing diversity initiatives.
In short, if Democrats support it, the administration wants to kill it. Because if they are successful, they believe it will end up killing off the Democratic party.
