by Stefano Vaccara
NEW YORK (USA) (ITALPRESS) – The longest speech on the State of the Union in U.S. history ended after almost an hour and fifty minutes. A record of duration, but above all a record of spectacularization. More than a speech about the state of the Union, Donald Trump’s speech in front of the Tuesday evening Congress seemed a political show built as a television variety, with guests, awards, provocations and few real content. From the beginning the tone of the evening was understood. Trump opened by celebrating the U.S. male hockey team, Olympic gold medal, received by a bipartisan standing ovation. Then the theatrical announcement: the Medal of Freedom at the goalkeeper Connor Hellebuyck, as in a game show where the prize comes as a surprise. It was only the first of a long series of moments built for TV, between medals delivered live and orchestrated applause.
In the courtroom, however, four Supreme Court judges were also sitting, just those who a few days before had inflicted Trump a heavy defeat by rejecting his global duties. The president greeted them with a handshake, without frontal attacks. Only a reference to the sentence as a “unlucked” decision and the promise to bypass it with “still stronger” tools.
An obvious change of tone compared to the previous days. For the rest, the speech was a sequence of self-celebration and attacks. Trump painted an America that grows and wins, backed by disputed numbers and hyperbolic promises: rates able to replace income taxes, economy “so strong”, global colossal investments. Many statements repeat already denials several times, but serve to build the narrative of a country in the middle of gold.
The tone was clearly racist about immigration. The president summoned stories of immigrant-related crimes and accused the Minnesota Somali community of systemic fraud, in a sequence of stories of violence and chaos against a whole community. Response was the Somali American MP of Minnesota Ilhan Omar, who shouted in court to Trump that he had “killed Americans”.
The President replied: “You should be ashamed.” Shortly after, addressing the opposition as a whole, he indicated the democratic benches and said: “These people are crazy.” The climate was further burned when the Texas Democrat Congressman Al Green showed a sign with a letter: “Black people are not monkeys”, reference to the racist video about Obama shared by the president on social media. Green was immediately escorted outside the courtroom. A scene that made visible the political and racial fracture now open in the country.
In the passage on the next midterm elections, Trump insisted on electoral fraud, claiming that the vote will no longer be tricked and that all voters will have to show an identity document and a proof of citizenship. He implicitly accused irregular immigrants of affecting the electoral system, relaunching a narrative already repeatedly denied by independent studies and verifications, according to which there is no evidence of widespread fraud.
The political message is clear: turning the vote of 2026 into a referendum on security and national identity, moving attention from the economic land, today much more insidious for the White House. On the international front, Trump has dedicated only generic nods.
On Ukraine he reiterated that the war would never begin under his leadership and called for negotiated peace, without indicating a concrete plan or clarifying the future of aid to Kyiv. On Gaza he claimed the role of the United States in fostering a truce between Israel and Hamas, presenting himself as the creator of new regional balances, but without facing the humanitarian crisis or outlining a strategy for the after-conflict.
Trump spent little time – compared to a very long speech – even Iran. He promised that he would not allow Tehran to obtain the nuclear weapon and called for new interventions, but without explaining a concrete strategy on the massive military deployment in the region. In the end, the most significant data remains what has not been said in record speech.
No word on the Epstein Files, despite the theme, continues to dominate the public debate and raise questions about the transparency of the administration. No reference to documents still unpubliced, including – according to a newly published PBS scoop – those that would also contain accusations of sexual violence against minors collected by the FBI and in which the name of Trump would appear. A total silence on a scandal that the president cannot make Americans forget. And to remind him, in the classroom, there were also some victims invited by the democratic senators.
No words about the two American citizens killed in Minneapolis in federal immigration operations, Renee Nicole Good and Alex Pretti. No reflection on the role of the ICE or on the national tensions resulting from it. Like those things didn’t exist.
In the end there is the impression of a long and noisy show, built for the base and for the television. A State of the Union that distributed medals and applause, but avoided the most uncomfortable knots. More than the state of the Union, the speech showed the state of the distance between the White House story and the real questions of a growing part of Americans. In the democratic replica, entrusted to the Governor of Virginia Abigail Spanberger, Trump was accused of “forgotten, found scapegoats and distracted” the country from real problems.
-Photo IPA Agency-
(ITALPRESS).
