Donald Trump’s state of dysfunction address
When a new President of the United States addresses Congress shortly after taking office, it’s not technically considered a State of the Union address. That’s fitting, because Donald Trump is only technically President of the United States. Over the past six weeks he’s shown zero interest in doing the job and zero ability to understand the job. Now he has to get up and give a speech to Congress tonight as if he were the President. It’s difficult to know exactly what we’ll get from him.
Over the past few months we’ve seen a few different versions of Donald Trump. There’s the lethargically senile version of Trump who just sits there while other people run his press conferences from over his shoulder. There’s the agitated Trump who attacked Zelensky in confused and enraged fashion. There’s the senile geezer Trump who kept talking about Hannibal Lecter and getting eaten by a shark during his campaign speeches. Any of those versions of Trump could surface tonight. That’s the thing about dementia patients. Their behavior can be wildly inconsistent.
We also saw a different version of Trump during his one and only debate with Joe Biden. Trump was energetic and almost coherent for the first twenty minutes or so, before whatever juiced him up wore off and he went back to his slow talking and confused self. It’s possible that Trump’s babysitters will try to juice him in that same mysterious fashion for tonight’s speech. But it’s also worth noting that Trump was lethargic and confused for his entire debate against Kamala Harris. So it may not be possible for Trump’s people to briefly produce a coherent Trump even when they try whatever they’re trying.
The point is this: we know a lot of what Trump will say tonight. He’ll brag about his idiotic trade wars. He’ll brag about the DOGE debacle. And he’ll announce a bunch of nonsense initiatives that will either be done incompetently or not be done at all. But beyond that, we really don’t know which version of a decaying Donald Trump we’re going to get. Will he sound like he’s asleep? Will he get angry and start yelling at people in the room he doesn’t like? Will he go off script and start talking about cannibals? Don’t be surprised by anything. Better yet, don’t watch.
