For a few minutes on Tuesday night, president Donald Trump’s address to a joint session of the 119th Congress threatened to disintegrate into bedlam.
It was shortly after nine o’clock and Trump had just begun speaking when all eyes were drawn to a lone figure rising from his seat in the Democratic side of the House chamber. Al Green, the Texas Democratic congressman, raised a gold-handled cane and shouted repeatedly at the president in the opening minutes of his address from the lectern.
“You don’t have a mandate to cut Medicaid,” Green called out, loudly, sternly, repeatedly. To the left, a lusty chorus of Republican booing alchemised to a full-blooded chant of “USA! USA! USA!”
Once it subsided, Trump resumed reading from the autocue only to have the Texan interrupt him again – and then again. The speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, issued a warning. But still Green heckled and persisted until he was finally removed the chamber.
“The president said he had a mandate,” Green said a few minutes later as he made his way through the ghostly corridors of the Capitol. “And I was making it clear to the president that he had no mandate to cut Medicaid. I have people who are very fearful. These are poor people, and they have only Medicaid in their lives when it comes to their healthcare.
“And I want him to know that his budget calls for deep cuts in Medicaid. I am willing to suffer whatever punishment is available to me. It is worth it to let people know that there are some of us who are willing to stand up against this president’s desire to cut Medicaid. This is the richest country in the world, and we have people who don’t have good healthcare. This president is unfit. He should not hold the office.”
Inside, Trump warmed to what turned into a record-setting 99-minute speech which was a condensed version of election-campaign riffs and post-inauguration shocks and promises, riddled with the familiar exaggerations and factual inaccuracies.
“America is back,” he opened, as on the floor and in the gallery, elected Republicans and chosen guests chanted “USA! USA!”
“Among my very highest priorities is to rescue our economy and get dramatic and immediate relief to working families. As you know, we inherited, from the last administration, an economic catastrophe and an inflation nightmare. Their policies drove up energy prices, pushed up the cost of groceries and drove the necessities of life out of reach for millions of Americans. We suffered the worst inflation in 48 years, but perhaps even in the history of our country. As president, I am fighting every day to reverse this damage and make America affordable again.”
To Trump’s right, the Democrats adopted an attitude of studied indifference. A handful rose from their seats as a courtesy when he entered the room but that was it. Many caught up on their text messages. Democratic congresswomen wore pink but the party mood was sombre.
The main intrigue about the occasion revolved around the concerted Democratic response in what was their first opportunity to confront the president directly. After Green’s startling intervention, the night was alive with the possibility that the defeated and fractured party had found an anarchic streak and would break Trump’s address with a series of radical interruptions.
Instead, they remained silent and registered their beliefs with hand-held signs carrying their messages – “Save Medicaid”; “Musk Steals”. As a protest, it respected the rules of the evening. But given that the camera was fixed on the president and the enthusiastic nodding of vice-president JD Vance and speaker Johnson, who went full bobble-head with every utterance, the impact was muted.
Nancy Pelosi, the party grandee and former House speaker, was a picture of contained fury but overall the Democratic Party was reminiscent of a lethargic humanities class enduring a punishingly dull philosophy lecture. Yet again they had time, through Trump’s rambling delivery, to reflect on the stunning turn their world has taken since January 6th, 2021, after which Trump left Washington friendless and finished.
To witness a Republican Party in choreographed shows of rapture must have been demoralising and intimidating even as they experienced, at close range, the full sensory overload of a Trump rally speech.
“We have accomplished more in 34 days than most administrations do in four years, in eight years. And we are just ... getting started ... our spirit is back and our confidence is back and the American dream is bigger and better than ever before ... a comeback the likes of which the world has never witnessed and perhaps will never witness again.” And on, and on.
Jasmine Crockett, another Texan Democrat, walked out midway through his address. Others followed. But the Republicans didn’t care. Trump illuminated the evening by introducing several guests to the chamber with moving and often heartbreaking stories, including the family of Laken Riley, whose murder last summer led to the passing of new law in her name, and also the family of Corey Comperatore, who was killed by one of the bullets fired at Donald Trump during last July’s rally in Butler, Pennsylvania.
The loudest cheer of the night was reserved for Devarjaye Taylor, a 13-year-old boy who is battling a diagnosis of brain cancer. He was presented with a badge by Sean Curran, Trump’s new Secret Service director, to make him “an agent of the United States”.
The boy’s face, in that moment, was an expression of pure joy. Something in its innocence and purity reflected the pomp and pomposity of the night as though the chamber was for an instant transformed into a house of mirrors.
At one stage, Trump referred to “unelected bureaucrats”. Elon Musk arose from his seat to applaud and at once, several Democrats stood and pointed in accusatory silence at the world’s richest man. Had you forecast this surreal image to veteran politicians on either side of the House a year ago, they could not have imagined it.
But as well as everything else, this period in American political life has altered the perception of time. Tuesday night’s address fell just two days before the one-year anniversary of Joe Biden’s final state of the union speech to Congress. In retrospect, that hour turned out to be the last unblemished experience of Biden’s 50-year political career. It’s customary for the speechwriters to rifle through the pages of darker history for occasions like this and on that evening, Biden fell on the winter of 1941, when the burden of the office weighed heavily on Franklin Roosevelt.
“President Roosevelt’s purpose was to wake up the Congress and alert the American people that this was no ordinary moment. Freedom and democracy were under assault in the world. Tonight, I come to the same chamber to address the nation. Now it is we who face an unprecedented moment in the history of the union.”
That was Biden’s rallying cry for the election year ahead. Now, like many millions of Americans, the former president found himself watching on television (there is no way he could have spent the evening in his Delaware livingroom flicking between college basketball games) as his nemesis made a triumphant return to the House chamber.
If he watched, he would have found himself mocked and goaded by Trump once more even as the new faces of the Republican power base – Robert Kennedy Jr and Tulsi Gabbard and the other cabinet members – beamed up at the president.
Musk, suited for once and content to make an unobtrusive entrance, sat in the gallery alongside too many Trumps to count. There, too, was Kash Patel and directly in front of him stood Chris LaCivita, who along with Susie Wiles was the chief strategist behind Trump’s election campaign.
“I look at the Democrats in front of me and realise there is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy, or stand or applaud ... these people sitting right here will not clap, will not stand and will not cheer, no matter what,” Trump lamented at one point.
“For just this one night why not join us in celebrating so many wins for America?”
When Trump admitted “there will be a little disturbance” from tariffs but “we’re okay with that”, a Democrat objected: “No, we’re not!” A Republican retorted loudly: “We’re good, we’re good.”
Trump gave this address on an evening when the stock market – a barometer he cherishes – tanked after his announcement of punitive 25 per cent tariffs against Canada and Mexico, threatening even higher prices for Americans who voted for the opposite.
His startling detente with Russia looks set to continue at pace as he vowed to deliver a fast peace deal between Ukraine and Russia.
He said he appreciated Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskiy’s willingness to sign a minerals deal with the United States and come to the negotiating table in a bid to end the war with Russia.
“Earlier today, I received an important letter from President Zelenskiy of Ukraine. The letter reads: ‘Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer,” Mr Trump said.
And once again he found time to remind his party that the conquest of Greenland has not been forgotten. But still he promised his version of the golden dream,
“Get ready for an incredible future because the golden age of America has only just begun. It will be like nothing that has ever been seen before. Thank you and God bless you.”
The remaining Democrats had scuttled out the chamber doors before he had even finished his final salute. Half the room was empty, the other half rapturous.
Lincoln’s old refrain – “A house divided against itself cannot stand” – came roaring from the Illinois summer of 1858 to this new and alien moment where the two governing parties of the United States look across the aisle in mutual contempt and mistrust and bewilderment.
