Donald Trump on Tuesday declared that his administration was “just getting started”, after a radical start to his presidency that has seen his administration slash the size of the federal workforce, upend longstanding American alliances and rattle markets with an escalating trade war.
“America is back,” Trump declared, opening the his primetime speech to a joint session of Congress, the first of his second term. Republicans broke into a boisterous chant of “USA”.
A jocular Trump touted his administration’s “swift and unrelenting action” and praised the work of his billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, who has led his administration’s efforts to dramatically downsize the federal government through his so-called “department of government efficiency”. “Thank you, Elon,” Trump said, gesturing to Musk, who was seated in the House gallery overlooking the chamber where Democrats held signs that read “Musk steals”. He said his administration was in the process of “reclaiming the Panama Canal” and repeated his threat to take control of Greenland: “One way or the other, we’re going to get it.”
Trump seized the high-profile moment to defend his actions to date, including nearly 100 executive orders and more than 400 executive actions, according to his tally. With performative flair, Trump offered a sampling of initiatives he said Musk’s team had identified as wasteful, among them the creation of an Arab Sesame Street, “making mice transgender” and promoting LGBTQ+ rights in Lesotho, the African country he said “nobody has ever heard of”.
“This is real,” he exclaimed, drawing laughs from the crowd.
Early in the night, as Trump bragged about the size of his electoral college and popular vote victory – “a map that reads almost completely red for Republican” – Democrats heckled and booed, prompting House Speaker Mike Johnson to bang his gavel and demand decorum. “You don’t have a mandate,” shouted Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, who was escorted out after refusing to be seated. Last month, Green filed articles of impeachment against Trump.
Trump claimed a mandate for “bold and profound change”, though his 1.5 point popular vote was the smallest margin of victory for any successful presidential candidate since Richard Nixon in 1968.
Trump’s address to Congress came just hours after he launched a trade war against three of its top trading partners that sent financial markets spiraling and raised fresh concerns of inflation. Just after midnight on Tuesday, the US slapped 25% tariffs on goods from Mexico and Canada and doubled to 20% the levy he imposed on Chinese products last month. Trump vowed a tit-for-tat retaliation – “whatever they tariff us, we tariff them” – and insisted the new levies would grow the economy and create jobs, even as economists warn the polices could harm consumers and make inflation worse.
“Tariffs are about making America rich again and making America great again,” Trump said, adding a caveat: “There’ll be a little disturbance, but we’re OK with that. It won’t be much.”
He blamed the soaring price of eggs on his predecessor’s energy policies while pledging his “National ENERGY Emergency” would help usher in a new era of domestic drilling.
In accordance with tradition, Trump’s arrival in the chamber was announced by the sergeant-at-arms. As he walked to the dais, Trump appeared to revel in the cacophonous applause of Congressional Republicans, who have declined to reign in the president even as he threatens their authority as an independent branch of government.
Seated behind Trump was his vice-president, JD Vance and Johnson.
Past presidents have used the first major speech as an opportunity to reach across party lines and appeal to their critics. But Trump did the opposite. He called Joe Biden the “worst president in American history” and claimed new tech investments wouldn’t have happened if Kamala Harris had won the 2024 election.
“Why not join us in celebrating so many incredible wins for America,” Trump chided Democrats, many of whom sat stone-faced in the chamber.
Trump ticked through many of his actions, from renaming the Gulf of Mexico to making English the official language of the United States and banning trans women from women’s sports.
“Our country will be woke no longer,” he declared.
The speech was riddled with falsehoods and misleading claims, including a riff about millions of centenarians aged “110 to 119” receiving social security benefits.
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“We have a healthier country than I thought, Bobby,” he quipped, referencing Robert F Kennedy Jr, his recently installed secretary of Health and Human Services, who leads the vaccine-skeptical “Make America Healthy Again” movement.
The 15 guests who joined Melania Trump, the first lady, to watch the address included the widow and daughter of Corey Comperatore, the firefight who was killed at the campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, where Trump survived an assassination attempt as well as Marc Fogel, the American teacher that Trump helped free from a Russian prison last month. Other guests were intended to highlight the administrations’ policies, including family members of Americans killed by men in the US without legal status and anti-trans advocates.
The House Democratic leader, Hakeem Jeffries, had encouraged his members to attend the address in order to demonstrate a “strong, determined and dignified Democratic presence in the chamber”. Many did attend, bringing fired federal workers and Americans who rely on social safety net programs threatened by Republicans’ budget proposal.
But several Democrats chose to skip the event, including Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who instead shared her live reactions to the speech on the social media platform BlueSky. Ahead of the address, several Congressional Democrats and elected officials joined a virtual pre-buttal, “Calling BS,” to slam the Trump administration’s actions so far.
“I don’t need to legitimize his lies by being in the room,” Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut said on the livestream, adding that Democrats need to make clear that the president is “transparently and brazenly lying to the American people”.
Senator Ed Markey of Massachusetts said he plans to attend Trump’s speech as a way to show solidarity with Americans who are “rejecting Donald Trump’s hateful vising for our country”.
When the speech concludes, the newly elected Democratic senator Elissa Slotkin of battleground Michigan will deliver the party’s formal rebuttal after Trump speaks.
Trump is also likely to expand on his “America First” foreign policy vision, just days after a dramatic Oval Office meeting with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, spiraled out of control as Trump and Vance berated him over a perceived lack of respect.
With the future of US support for Ukraine hanging in the balance, Zelenskyy on Tuesday proposed a possible peace plan to end the war in Ukraine, saying he is willing to work “constructively” under Trump’s “strong leadership” and that his country was prepared to sign a deal granting the US access to its critical minerals.
In his remarks, Trump said the US would take “historic action to dramatically expand production of critical minerals and rare earths” and said he was working “tirelessly” to end the “savage conflict in Ukraine”.
Trump delivered the speech from the House chamber, where lawmakers scrambled for makeshift weapons as a mob of the president overran the Capitol and attempted to break down the doors on 6 January 2021. After his inauguration, the president issued pardons for 1,500 people involved in the attack, including those convicted of violently assaulting Capitol police officers.
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