Boredom and terror meld in Trump address

Hello and happy Thursday. President Trump addressed Congress — and America — Tuesday night in a speech that was both painfully long and studded with all the threats and grievance we have come to expect from our perpetually peeved commander in chief.

The World Health Organization? “Corrupt!” he cried.

The United Nations Human Rights Council? “Un-American!”

Federal employees? “They will either show up for work in person or be removed from their job.”

All this while Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene appeared to be chewing gum and Vice President JD Vance’s jaw hung open in glee. I couldn’t help but think he looked like a vintage Howdy Doody marionette, eternally trapped in smug if mindless satisfaction.

“Our country will be woke no longer,” Trump exclaimed to the roaring cheers of MAGA Republicans. And I fear he is right — if by woke, he means empathetic, inclusive and interested in civil rights.

Meanwhile the Democrats shot back with … nothing.

Bipartisanship and a brave young woman

Before we dive further into the depths of Trump’s speech, let’s give a shout out to a brave young woman, and highlight a moment of bipartisanship, courtesy of Melania Trump.

One of the first lady’s guests Tuesday night was teenager Elliston Berry, who woke up one morning when she was 14 to find a classmate had used artificial intelligence to turn an Instagram image of her into deepfake pornography.

“I felt responsible and began to blame myself and was ashamed to tell my parents despite doing nothing wrong,” Berry told lawmakers at a recent roundtable that was part of her advocacy for the “Take It Down Act.”

That bill, championed by the first lady and introduced by Sens. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.), would hold accountable both the creators of deepfake porn and the Big Tech that allows it to be posted, while giving victims the right to have it rapidly removed. It passed the Senate in February and was highlighted by the president during his speech, under the watchful eye of his wife.

While the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others contend the measure targets a bad problem with a bad solution, I’m going to argue that in a Congress full of bad ideas, it’s at least not opening federal lands to logging, attempting to erase transgender existence from public life or abandoning our international allies. So I’ll take it.

I’ll bet Melania’s husband signs it into law in the not-too-distant future.

Back to the Dems

Meanwhile, Democrats continued to flop and flounder like so many trout pulled from the stream of progressive idealism and flung onto the rocks. A few women wore pink, I guess a callback to the “pussyhat” marches of 2017? Some Democrats held up little round paddles with weak-sauce protest slogans on them, like they were repressed country club wives unhappy with the goods at a silent auction. A few walked out or didn’t show up at all, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Texas Democrat Al Green takes the honor for at least trying to cause some good trouble, by shaking his cane at the president before being kicked out at the order of Speaker Mike Johnson.

“I’ll accept the punishment,” he told CSPAN afterward. “It’s worth it to let people know that there’s some of us who are going to stand up to against this president’s desire to cut Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security.”

And indeed, for those who are vulnerable and in MAGA’s sights, there was plenty of terror in Trump’s windy rants, even beyond those critical social safety nets. Migrants, legal or not, should know that the “great liberation of America” remains underway, a promise to continue to ramp up deportations.

Transgender people should know that Trump is “forever ending the lie that any child is trapped in the wrong body,” and “we feel so much better for it, don’t we?”

Panama and Greenland? Coming for you.

Even farmers aren’t safe, with Trump proclaiming that they will “probably have to bear with me,” while his tariffs and halting of agricultural exports for foreign aid demolish their businesses.

But the sad spectacle of the Democrats just sitting there during the whole tirade reinforced that they simply don’t know how to handle Trump 2.0 — and Trump knows it.

The official Democratic response was given by Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA agent who served multiple terms in the House before winning her Senate seat last year. She’s charming, she’s smart, she’s earnest — everything you’d want from a Democrat circa 2008.

She gave a lovely, come-together speech about how her mom and dad were split politically, “but it was never a big deal, because we had shared values that were bigger than any one party.”

That’s great, except that there are a bunch of Americans, as my colleague Kevin Rector points out, who are so afraid for their future that they are thinking of leaving the country. And there are a bunch more Americans who are pretty sure that democracy may be on life support, and that we aren’t talking about Republicans and Democrats so much as we are talking about autocracy and repression.

So the takeaway from Trump’s speech should be that MAGA has long known exactly what it wants, and now knows how to get it.

But Democrats have forgotten the most basic lesson that even Elliston, at the age of 15, seems to know better than they do: When the attack knocks you down, get up and fight.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Transgender Americans weigh leaving U.S. over Trump’s policies. Some already have
The what happened: ’ Democratic Response to Trump Shows a Party Divided on How to Resist Him
The L.A. Times special: California farmers backed Trump. Now, his tariffs could hurt them
Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. Our amazing team of photojournalists covered the Oscars as few can. If you haven’t checked out their stellar work, here it is.

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