President Donald Trump declared the far-reaching, disruptive actions of his first 40 days in office as the first wave of a “common sense revolution,” blaming Democrats during his joint address to Congress on Tuesday for lingering problems and claiming credit for a wrecking ball approach that is roiling Washington and the world.
“America’s momentum is back,” Trump said in a stemwinder that lasted an hour and 40 minutes. “Our spirit is back. Our pride is back.”
While most presidents use such addresses to tout new programs, unveil ambitious initiatives or whip legislation, Trump offered a laundry list of all that he had obliterated — pacts with foreign governments, regulations, diversity initiatives.
Boasting about his early flurry of executive orders, Trump said that everything — withdrawing the U.S. from climate treaties, the World Health Organization and the UN human rights council; slashing the federal government, freezing regulations and all foreign aid — was an effort “to restore common sense, safety, optimism and wealth.”
“The people elected me to do the job, and I’m doing it,” he continued, declaring it a “a time for big dreams and bold action.”
On a day that saw the stock markets dip following Trump’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico — and in the midst of a high-stakes diplomatic staredown with Ukraine that has allies anxious — Trump promised that it was all part of a plan to enrich the country and force neighbors to crack down on the drug trade.
“My administration has launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history. And we quickly achieved the lowest numbers of illegal border crossers ever recorded,” Trump said. “The media and our friends in the Democrat party kept saying we needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
Trump last year urged Republicans to thwart a bipartisan border bill to deny former President Joe Biden a win, just months before the election. His taunting of his predecessor typified a speech that was full of all the familiar Trumpian self-congratulation, hyperbole and withering partisan attacks.
Trashing the man who defeated him in 2020 as “the worst president in American history,” Trump blamed his predecessor for illegal immigration, stubborn inflation and, specifically, the high price of eggs, and said his first month in office is the best ever. “Do you know who number two is?” Trump asked. “George Washington.”
Opening his speech by recounting his victory in last November’s election, Trump drew shouts and protests from the Democratic side of the aisle. One lawmaker, Rep. Al Green, (D-Tex.), was removed from the chamber after continuing to shout back at the president in protest of the Republican plan to cut Medicaid.
Trump groused that there was “nothing I can do” to make Democrats “stand or smile or applaud” him, claiming that his victory amounted to a “mandate like has not been seen in many decades.”
Describing the Republicans’ reconciliation bill as a package of “tax cuts for everybody,” he sarcastically suggested that Democrats should vote for the proposal they have derided as a giveaway for corporations and the wealthy.
“I’m sure you’re going to vote for those tax cuts because otherwise I don’t think the people will ever vote you into office,” Trump said.
His dismissal of the opposition party, who he needled and mocked throughout the speech, prompting several Democrats to walk out of the House chamber mid-speech, came as Republicans may need Democratic votes to avoid a government shutdown. And it underscored an inclination that has thus far defined Trump’s second term — an even greater indifference to countenancing establishment views or bipartisan buy-in for his MAGA agenda.
While declaring that lowering costs for families was his top priority, Trump devoted only a few lines to the subject. Claiming he was “working hard” to get the price of eggs back down, he implied that the job was in the hands of his secretary of Agriculture, who he addressed directly like he might have done in a boardroom scene from ‘The Apprentice.’
“Secretary, do a good job on that one,” he said, pointing at Brooke Rollins.
He continued with the reality-show style theater throughout the speech, signing an executive order renaming a wildlife refuge after a woman who was murdered by an undocumented immigrant, naming a pediatric cancer patient in the balcony an honorary Secret Service agent and admitting a star student, also in attendance, into West Point.
Trump devoted more time to defending his and Elon Musk’s chainsaw-styled slasher approach to reducing the size of the federal bureaucracy. After thanking Musk, who he described as “the head of DOGE (the Dept. of Government Efficiency),” Trump drew laughs as he listed several of the aid programs he had cut: “a $3.5 million consulting contract for lavish fish; monitoring, $1.5 million for voter confidence in Liberia; $14 million for social cohesion in Mali; $59 million for illegal alien hotel rooms in New York City.”
And he mischaracterized “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program,” suggesting that payments were being made to thousands of deceased individuals, a debunked claim that Trump has made repeatedly.
Musk, who attended the address Tuesday night, has had to scramble to rehire several of the critical employees he indiscriminately fired, including those who oversee the country’s nuclear weapons. And the tech billionaire has acknowledged making a number of mistakes. But Trump framed DOGE’s work as part of his economic agenda.
“By slashing all of the fraud, waste and theft we can find, we will defeat inflation, bring down mortgage rates, lower car payments and grocery prices, protect our seniors, and put more money in the pockets of American families,” Trump said.
He also touted $1.7 billion in new investments in America since he took office and defended the controversial approach with tariffs that has shaken the stock market and angered allies in Canada and Mexico. Trump demanded that those countries “do much more” to tackle the flow of illegal drugs to America, which he has used as his rationale for the tariffs — despite almost no fentanyl having entered the U.S. from Canada.
In a nod to the political risk of those policies, Trump spoke directly to American farmers, who required a $29 billion bailout by Trump following tariffs in his first term. But he offered no specifics. “I love the farmer,” he declared. “Our farmers are going to have a field day right now.”
Tariffs, Trump said, “are about making America rich again and making America great again. And it’s happening. And it will happen rather quickly. There will be a little disturbance. But we’re okay with that. It won’t be much.”
Losses on the major stock indexes this week following Trump’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on Canada and Mexico wiped out all gains for the S&P 500 since Election Day.
Turning to foreign policy some 80 minutes into his speech, Trump returned to the brash imperialism outlined in his inaugural address, vowing to wrest control of the Panama Canal away from the Chinese and suggesting that a looming independence vote in Greenland would ultimately result in the U.S. taking it away from Denmark.
“One way or the other we’re going to get it,” Trump said.
He blamed Biden for the messy 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the war in Gaza that he said wouldn’t have happened on his watch and for spending too much money backing Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Just more than 24 hours after pausing all U.S. military aid to Ukraine in an effort to pressure President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to sign an economic agreement with the U.S. and engage in peace talks with Russia, Trump read a letter Zelenskyy wrote him Tuesday expressing regret over last week’s blow-up in the Oval Office and desire to achieve peace.
“I appreciate that he sent this letter,” Trump said, offering nothing further about whether the agreement to share profits from Ukraine’s rare earth minerals was still on the table.
He criticized Europe for spending more on Russian energy than aid to Ukraine and called out Democrats — and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, in particular — for criticizing his approach of pressuring Ukraine while accepting a number of Russian conditions and even parroting Kremlin talking points.
“Do you want to keep it going for another five years?” he said, looking at the Democratic side and keying on Warren. “Yeah, yeah, you would say — Pocahontas says yes.”
