UPDATE: Trump just started a war in the Middle East. Read on to see how that is linked to his toxic SOTU and bad poll numbers.
On Tuesday, February 24th Trump delivered his state of the union message with Trump’s approvals at an all time low. The Economist reports:
401 days into Donald Trump’s term
The president’s net approval rating is -17,
up 0.0 points since last week.
39% approve, 56% disapprove, 5% not sure
Trump tried to use splashy optics to get past the fact that the two big issues that got him elected are Making Americans Reject Him these days.
Americans don’t like the way Trump is handling immigration issues. He promised to boot out the worst of the worst criminal immigrants and instead is allowing Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem to put little children in gulags, arrest nannies and landscapers who are not criminals (only 7% of the arrestees have a criminal record at this point), and shooting and killing American citizens who are peaceful protesters.
Americans don’t believe he is being a good steward of the economy. The BBBill passed by the Republican congress eradicated the ACA subisidies which means Americans will become sicker because they don’t have health care insurance. The bill will cause the loss of rural hospitals and hospitals in cities that work with the disadvantaged. But all Americans will end up paying more for healthcare because people with no insurance who are sick will wait too long to get help and end up in the Emergency Room in worse condition. We all pay for that.
The rich got richer and the poor got poorer thanks to this Republican reconciliation bill.
He did two big things in his SOTU to handle these sinking poll numbers.
First, he got everyone in the room to clap and feel good by giving out awards.
Second, he lied a whole lot.
THE SPECTACLE
He created a spectacle in which he could get the reflected glory from some real heros: the American Olympic hockey team and others.
In total, Trump issued six medals during the address, including the Medal of Honor, Purple Heart, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Legion of Merit.
Two Medals of Honor—the nation’s highest military decoration—were awarded to military pilots.
THE LIES
He blamed Democrats for everything he has failed to fix in the economy or made worse. What else is new? He claimed illusory victories for himself right and left: the economy, wars he says he has stopped, immigration yada yada yada (although the border is secure these days because no one in their right mind wants to come to this country anymore). There was almost nothing at all that was new in his state of the union speech. There were no big programs to help Americans struggling to make ends meet, gain jobs or reverse the huge tax breaks for the ultra wealthy in this speech.
Trump always claims false victories. It has been up to the America people to realize, albeit slowly, that what he says is real does not match their lived reality. Americans gave Trump a full year to get this country going in the right direction. He has failed to do so. His tariffs are taxes on consumers. Americans do seem to understand that now.
TRUMP DID NOT CREATE MORE JOBS
Trump said nothing about the job market, because it is so bad. New graduates are having trouble landing jobs. Many middle managers are being replaced by AI.
Business Insider reports: As for the job market, growth has been the lowest in decades aside from recessions, and Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency took a sizable swing at the federal workforce.
Maybe the already wealthy are doing great, but average Americans are not. That’s why Trump’s poll numbers are in the toilet. Inflation is holding steady at around 2% so far, which was comparable to what it was with Biden as president, but incomes are not rising for most Americans. As for being respected, we are definitely not respected again by our allies, only other dictatorships including Hungary and Russia.
DOES BINGE LYING WORK FOR TRUMP?
Rachel Bitecofer, an astute political commentator, hits the nail on the head when it comes to political lying in our country. Here is what she says:
Because America alone has turned the First Amendment into something it was never meant to be: a shield not just for speech, but for organized, industrial-scale deception. The right to free speech has been perverted to the right to lie.
Other democracies regulate media ecosystems. They enforce standards around defamation, broadcast licensing, and misinformation in ways the U.S. does not. They do not treat deliberate falsehood as a sacred right.
Only America does. We live in a country where I can’t lie on purpose to sell products but I can lie on purpose to sell politics.
UPSIDEDOWN WORLD
As David Frum writes in the New York Times:
The speech turned reality on its head in many ways. The president who has enriched himself and his family by more than a billion dollars in his first year in office called on Congress to clean up its corruption. The president who has collected about $175 billion in illegal tariffs from the American people falsely told them that he had given them a great big tax cut. The president solemnly condemned political violence—the same president who ended his first term by inciting a mob to sack Congress and overturn an election. Maybe most shocking, Trump demanded that members of Congress rise to agree that it’s the first duty of government to protect American citizens—even as his own government by its brutal police methods has shot American citizens dead on the streets and then tried to deceive the country about how those Americans had been killed and why. Then of course there were the many misstatements of fact about the economy, about crime, and about wars and peace—many of which look like deliberate decisions to deceive the public watching on television.
A SUGAR HIGH?
Will this SOTU message change that reality? I doubt it. If it does create a sugar high with some of Trump’s loyal voters, it will give way to reality in a few days when their rural hospital closes; when they get sick and have to choose between foregoing treatment for the cancer they just found out they have, or getting treatment and declaring bankruptcy; when the cost of produce goes up because the immigrant workers are in concentration camps instead of being hired to pick fruit, when the cost of gas goes up because Trump attacked Iran.
“We’re winning so much,” Trump said. “Inflation is plummeting, incomes are rising fast. … America is respected again.”
THE EPSTEIN FILES HANG OVER TRUMP’S SOTU
Trump made no mention of the Epstein Files and the fact that NPR and other news outlets are reporting that the DOJ buried about 50 pages of interviews done by the FBI in 2019 (when Trump was president) of at least one woman who alleged that Trump and Epstein raped her when she was 13. By-the-way, that unnamed woman may well be Katie Johnson who I reported on months ago. If you want to see the video in which she talks about what Trump did to her, here is the link to my prior post. https://markinreport.com/2025/09/08/is-this-what-trump-wants-buried/
This is a dangerous moment for Trump. It has become clear that DOJ is engaged in a massive cover up to protect Trump. The Clinton testimony in front of congress was an opportunity for Hillary Clinton to remind the world that she has always been on the side of women who have been abused. Bill Clinton exposed Trump for lying about why he split with Epstein. Trump wants us to believe he saw Epstein as a creep. But at the time of the break with Epstein, Trump told Bill Clinton he was upset about a real estate deal that involved Epstein not that he broke with Epstein because he was a sex trafficker.
Trump needs a big distraction to get people thinking about something, anything other than Epstein.
TIME TO WAG THE DOG
What could be a better distraction for Trump than a war in the Middle East? As of today, Saturday, February 28th, the US and Israel have attacked Iran and Iran is attacking back.
Do you remember the film, American Hero? The film is about a spin doctor and a Hollywood producer who fabricate a war in Albania to distract voters from a presidential sex scandal. Sound familiar?