Winners & Losers | The Bully at the Pulpit
Why Rep. Al Green getting ejected from the State of the Union actually mattered.
Everyone did a State of the Union Special. Lincoln Square. Rick Wilson. All the great pro-democracy Substacks. It was going to be a real spectacle, right? Although the most anyone could say about it ahead of time is that we all kinda already knew what Trump was going to say: The economy’s the greatest economy in the history of great economies. I’ve stopped several dozen wars, many of them hadn’t even started yet. And some version of America needs more white people.
What we didn’t anticipate, or at least what we didn’t fully anticipate, was just how boring the whole thing was going to be.
What a waste of time. Trump didn’t bring the heat. There was a non-zero chance he was going to fart audibly and fall asleep at the podium. That would have actually been much more exciting than what transpired.
Eighty-five percent of gamblers on Polymarket thought he’d say a big-number word like million or billion or gazillion at least 15 times. Seven percent of bettors thought he’d say the word discombobulator. Long odds, but a big payoff (he didn’t say it).
All this is to say, by about 12:30 a.m. after the speech, lots of us who had been on livestreams for the last four hours wondered (even audibly) if Trump had actually jumped the shark.
This isn’t the only reason he’s our Loser of the Week. Let’s dive in.
Donald J. Trump, Loser
Generally, a spectacle like a nationally televised speech is where Trump really shines (like a polished turd). He’s a reality TV guy! He’s a troll! He knows how to say the things that make people gasp with stupidity or blush with shame.
But last Tuesday night, he didn’t even do his little hand dance. He didn’t talk even a little bit about how immigrants are eating cats and dogs!
His speech was distracting in how not distracting it was.
And the thing is, there is so much to be distracted from. Last week, the Trump administration announced plans to withhold a quarter-billion dollars in Medicaid funding from Minnesota and dare them to get the flu. It’s a very narrowly legal, possibly unconstitutional move that is predicated on fighting Somali fraud in the state, but is actually an attempt to punish blue state rivals. It’s cruel and stupid.
As the week came to a close, the administration had suggested Americans ought to flee Israel very quickly after a massive build up of naval power in the Gulf. We woke up Saturday to a message from Trump on Truth Social that the U.S. had begun a major military operation against the Iranian regime, which he called a “vicious group of very hard, terrible people.” He has no coherent policy here, no logical or rational reason to go to war with Iran at this time, and he’s not made a case for it. And now three U.S. service members are dead.