There were accessories and costumes, guest stars, heckled, a couple of turncoats and a released hostage. There were nasty laughs, imperial imaginations, fantastic arithmetic and a declaration of divine providence.
President Trump’s speech on Tuesday was a long and strong spectacle that lasted about 100 minutes, making it the longest presidential speech at the Congress of Modern History. But it was the rare moments of relative silence that seemed the most.
The Republicans were so rowdy for much of the night – roaring in Mr. Trump’s conversation on the border and his legal and political victories; Jumping on their feet to his statement that “stupidity is a problem, awareness is bad” – that it was revealing when they were sitting motionless.
They went above all when the president started talking about prices. His speech coincided with the start of a trade war he launched against the American neighbors, Canada and Mexico, which dropped the markets. He warned in his speech that there could be some adjustment period. “
The many members of his cabinet who will be responsible for trying to clean everything that has just listened to the first row quietly as Mr. Trump said. Just behind them seated John Thune, the head of the majority of the Senate who had appeared on CNN earlier in the day to express his distrust on the new prices.
Trump recalled that the last time he was president and had used prices, things were a little hazarded but seemed to work. He asked his audience to “bear me again” and promised that “this time will be even better”.
To this, the room fills up with the sound of the withers of the Democrats.
For a large part of the night, the Democrats looked like lost creatures that had crashed on a new hostile planet and had trouble breathing in the air. They wore pink bismol pepto, agitated little black paddles and shouted in unison about the attack on the Capitol on January 6 when the president said that he had supported the police.
The Republicans applauded whenever he played with the Democrats. He enjoyed reminding them of the Kennedy Scion which had defected their group and was seated on the side of the aisle. With this kind of name, Trump cracked, “You would have thought everyone would have applauded. How fast they forget!
The Republicans got up to applaud President Mike Johnson’s decision to start the representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, from the Chamber after keeping and shaking his cane to the president, shouting: “You do not have the mandate of MEDICAIDI!”
Former president Nancy Pelosi has had a cold look and calculated on her face for much of the night while the Republicans roared on Mr. Trump’s speech on the recovery of the Panama canal and his insistence that God had spared his life because he is intended to save America. She just started to laugh when he asked: “So, a democrats sitting in front of me, for that night, why not join us to celebrate so many incredible victories for America?”
The air in the house of the house was charged when the president mentioned that Elon Musk was seated in the gallery. Each head in the room turned to the technological magnate while it got up. No more supervillain bond look and the “technological support” t-shirt. Instead, he had on a suit and a tie. It was a Washington look of the most of Washington for the man razing Washington to the ground.
Was it a manifestation of respect for Congress, an institution for which he normally seems to have so little respect? Or did he have to do with the fact that the president had mocked the Ukrainian chief, Volodymyr Zelensky, for not having a costume when he visited the White House last week?
The Republicans barely stirred while Mr. Trump shaken the figures describing the “shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud” that he and Mr. Musk claimed to have discovered within the Social Security Administration.
It is easy for Republicans to make noises and jump from top to bottom when Mr. Trump talks about the Panama and English canal the official language of the United States. But what about when it takes up the third rail of American policy – the popular security security program, Social Security – and begins to play with it while millions of people at home look?
At one point, he started complaining about “non -elected bureaucrats” trying to thwart his program. It was the democrats’ turn to make noise. They started to point and shout on the many heads of the Republican Party, in the gallery, where Mr. Musk looked.
