President Trump’s address at the Congress on Tuesday was intended to serve two clear objectives: to give the American people an honest assessment of our position and to state a real plan for where we are going. It was a chance to show leadership – to unify, inspire and provide a roadmap for the future.
What America has obtained was something completely different: a chaotic mixture of personal grievances, revisionist history and an amazing obsession for its predecessor, Joe Biden.
It is not a question of republican against democrat. These are leadership. And for each measure, Trump’s address was a leadership failure.
In 90 minutes, Trump mentioned Biden by name at least 13 times – more than any modern president has never invoked his predecessor in an address in the congress. If Trump really wanted to report a clean break and a new daring direction, why was it so consumed to settle the old scores? A confident leader exposes a vision of the future – Trump hung desperately to the past.
It was not a roadmap for progress – it was a personal dissemination of grievances, interrupted only by bizarre detours like land outside the Greenland sector to consider being part of the United States. What has Greenland has to do with inflation, border security or real difficulties for American families? Absolutely nothing.
The Americans voted for the change last November – they wanted a leader who would place America first. What they obtained was a president more interested in putting themselves first and his rich friends.
Nothing has made clear than Trump’s gold card program – a plan to literally sell American citizenship for $ 5 million. While the families of immigrants who work follow the rules and wait for years for a shot to the American dream, Trump sells at auction of citizenship as if it was a membership in the VIP club – a quick pass for the global elite.
It is not only hypocritical – he exposes the rot at the heart of Trump’s vision: in his America, the rich write their own rules, and everyone must fend for themselves. This same logic has shaped Trump’s approach to the economy.
With inflation that tightens families across the country, what solutions did Trump propose? None. Instead, he boasted of emptying environmental protections, reducing clean energy investments and reducing foreign aid – as if these things would reduce grocery bills.
His only “big idea”? Prices.
Prices on Mexico. Prices in Canada. Prices on South Korea. Prices on China. As if taxed imports would magically repair inflation and relaunch manufacturing at the same time.
But Americans know better. Prices are only taxes on workers’ families – increase the prices of everything, from gas food to basic household items.
It was not an economic recovery plan – it was economic isolationism wrapped in patriotic slogans. And workers’ families will pay the price.
A cultural war
But the speech did not stop on an economic professional fault. Trump’s cultural war was at the front and center – attacking diversity, equity and inclusion programs, rejecting climate action as a “new green scam” and withdrawing the United States from the global agreements on which our communities count to fight climate change and protect our future.
This vision – of isolation, exclusion and environmental destruction – is exactly the opposite of what most Americans want. We understand that our strength comes from diversity, partnerships and the protection of places we call here.
What made Trump’s address even more alarming is his tone. Presidential speeches at Congress are supposed to be a plan for governance – it was a list of touches of enemies. Raugères against Biden, attacks on democrats, media mockery and even blows of international allies.
It is not leadership. It is the policy of grievances at his worst – the rhetoric of a man who considers the presidency not as a public service, but as a platform for personal revenge.
If this address is an indication of what the next four years will look like, we must prepare for the government by chaos – where the public service becomes in self -service, and leadership only serves the rich and well connected.
It’s bigger than policy differences. This is the kind of country we want to leave for the next generation.
Do we want leadership that raises each family – or a government that sells citizenship to billionaires while slamming the workers’ door? Do we want leaders who build a future together – or leaders who lead us against each other?
Here in Hawaiʻi, we know what leadership looks like. It is built on Aloha – compassion, responsibility and commitment to each other. It is a question of understanding that our strength comes from our diversity, not in spite of itself. It is a question of honoring our Kuleana to take care of the earth and each other, knowing that the success of one is linked to the success of all.
We must remain firm in the values that have transported us through the generations.
Trump’s speech was not just a missed opportunity – it was a warning. The values we cherish – here in Hawaiʻi and across the country – are attacked by leaders who consider the public service as a personal platform and citizenship as a commodity.
No matter what’s going on in Washington, we must remain firmly in the values that have led us through the generations. We must demand leadership that serves everyone – not just those who can afford to buy their path. We must show the rest of the country what real force looks like: the force rooted in the community, not the division; In compassion, not greed; In service, not personal interest.
Because if we allow the presidency to become nothing more than a personal soap box – where citizenship is for sale and that leadership is reduced to small grievances – we will not just lose a political struggle. We will lose the very heart of our democracy.
And for the good of our children, our communities and the future that we all share, it is something that we cannot and do not allow.
