Trump welcomes gold-medal winning Olympics men’s hockey team at State of the Union address
WASHINGTON — President Trump boasted he pulled off an economic “turnaround for the ages” in the longest State of the Union address in history — while using the US Olympics men’s hockey team as evidence that the country was “winning” like never before.
Trump played cheerleader-in-chief to a vast TV audience, describing the country as thriving while bringing stability to the world — and dusting off his signature campaign line about voters fearing the country would be “winning too much” on his watch.
The president took the opportunity to attack the Supreme Court for striking down his “reciprocal” tariffs — which he credited for bringing America’s economic “turnaround” — and blamed Democrats for having “caused” the affordability crisis.
Trump also touted new economic proposals to ban investors from scooping up homes, force drug companies to lower prices, require health care pricing transparency and restrict members of Congress from stock trading.
“Our country is winning again. In fact, we’re winning so much that we really don’t know what to do about it,” Trump told the joint session of Congress in his 108-minute address, praising the US men’s hockey team for having demonstrated this best by bringing home the gold.
Democrats stood and applauded the Olympic competitors but stayed in their seats for much of Trump’s speech — including when the president criticized their party for declining to vote for his marquee tax-and-spending bill, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
“Democrats, every single one of them voted against these really important and very necessary massive tax cuts. They wanted large-scale tax increases to hurt the people instead,” he scoffed.
Trump spent much of his address crowing about economic indicators showing that inflation dropped dramatically as the stock market smashes records.
He also used guests in the audience to demonstrate the impact of policies in legislation passed last year granting generous tax refunds to senior citizens, carbuyers and people who earn overtime and tips — plus new “Trump Accounts” for newborns.
‘Affordability’ attack a ‘dirty, rotten lie’
The president knocked Democrats’ “affordability” attacks and directly held his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, responsible for the “record-setting inflation” that hit a 40-year high nearly four years ago.
“The same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly use the word ‘affordability’ … knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure,” Trump roared.
“You caused that problem,” he said, as most Democrats sat stonefaced in the audience.
“They knew their statements were a dirty, rotten lie. Their policies created the high prices. Our policies are rapidly ending them,” Trump said. “We are doing really well. Those prices are plummeting downward.”
Under Democrats, he said, “from trade to health care, from energy to immigration, everything was stolen and rigged in order to drain the wealth out of the productive, hardworking people who make our country great, who make our country run under Biden and his corrupt partners in Congress and beyond,” he added.
“It reached a breaking point with the Green New ‘Scam.’ Open borders for everyone. They poured in by the millions and millions from prisons, from mental institutions. They were murderers: 11,888 murderers. They came into our country,” he said.
“You allowed that to happen,” Trump told the assembled Democrats.
Tariffs to ‘substantially replace’ income tax
Trump also lashed out at Supreme Court justices for their Friday ruling that struck down his “reciprocal” and fentanyl tariffs — but said he was so confident of pending new trade deals holding that he believes tariffs even can lower federal income taxes.
The president didn’t explode at the jurists as some critics and allies suspected, politely shaking hands with all four justices who showed up, including three who had voted against him — Amy Coney Barrett, Elena Kagan and John Roberts.
“One of the primary reasons for our country’s stunning economic turnaround — the biggest in history, where the Dow Jones broke 50,000 four years ahead of schedule, and the S&P hit 7,000 where it wasn’t supposed to do it for many years — were tariffs,” Trump said.
“I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars. They were ripping us so badly.”
Trump said “the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made knowing that the legal power that I as president have to make a new deal could be far worse for them.”
Trump shames ‘crazy’ Dems, asks Congress to pass his agenda
The president trumpeted many of his policies as polls show economic worries dragging on his approval ratings and putting Republican majorities at risk in the November midterms. The RealClearPolitics average of recent polls show 55.6% of the public disapproves of Trump’s job on the economy.
Trump urged members of Congress at several points to continue to pass various economic items.
“I want to stop all payments to big insurance companies and instead give that money directly to the people so they can buy their own health care, which will be better health care at a much lower cost,” Trump said. “My plan requires maximum price transparency.”
The president also boasted about brokering deals with pharmaceutical companies to voluntarily lower “wildly inflated costs” — under his threat of tariffs — and said Congress should “codify it.”
“Americans who have for decades paid by far the highest prices of any nation anywhere in the world for prescription drugs will now pay the lowest price anywhere in the world for drugs,” Trump said.
“I’m calling on Congress to codify my ‘most favored nation’ program into law,” he said. “It’s going to be very hard for somebody that comes along, after me to say, let’s raise drug prices by 700 or 800%. But John [Thune] and Mike [Johnson], if you don’t mind, codify it anyway.”
Trump called out to a guest in the audience who had struggled to buy a home due to competition from investment firms to underscore his call for restrictions on corporations.
“Stories like this are why last month I signed an executive order to ban large Wall Street investment firms from buying up thousands of single-family homes. Now I’m asking Congress to make that ban permanent, because a home is for people. Really, that’s what we want. We want homes for people, not for corporations,” he said.
“To ensure that all Americans can profit from a rising stock market, let’s also ensure that members of Congress cannot corruptly profit from using insider information,” he said. “Pass the ‘Stop Insider Trading Act’ without delay.”
In recognition of his bipartisan applause, Trump remarked, “they stood up for that. I can’t believe it,” before adding a dig: “Did [former House Speaker] Nancy Pelosi stand up if she is here?”
He did not request legislation to negate rising electricity prices due to artificial intelligence data centers, but said he was “pleased to announce that I have negotiated the new ratepayer protection pledge” with companies to “build their own power plants” as a “unique strategy” to restrain rate growth.
“We’re not going back,” Trump said during frequent Republican applause and periodic Democratic heckling, taking aim at their “crazy” policies, including blasting them for not applauding his calls to federally restrict transgender operations on children.
Trump largely didn’t take the bait from his hecklers, dismissing them as “sick people” when he was interrupted boasting about his role mediating various world conflicts, including wars between Cambodia and Thailand, Pakistan and India and Israel and Hamas.
Trump didn’t shy from controversy, however, insisting that “Somali pirates” had “ransacked Minnesota” of billions of dollars in taxpayer funds — and that “importing these cultures through unrestricted immigration and open borders brings those problems right here to the USA.”
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“You have killed Americans!” Somali-American Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) shouted in reference to federal agents killing two anti-deportation activists in the Twin Cities. Her colleague Rep. Al Green (D-Texas) was ejected earlier in the speech for holding a sign that said, “Black People Aren’t Apes!”
Trump didn’t tip his hand about plans for a possible military strike on Iran, but honored military heroes in attendance, including awarding wounded Army Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover the Medal of Honor for his role in last month’s raid on Caracas that captured Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro to face drug charges.
“We just received from our new friend and partner Venezuela more than 80 million barrels of oil,” Trump said while touting lower gas prices, going on to praise Maduro’s former vice president, interim leader Delcy Rodriquez, while hosting as a guest one of the political prisoners she released.