President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2025. Photo by Kayla Bartkowski | Getty Images
It was as if my drunk, racist uncle had staggered onto the stage at a family wedding, ripped the microphone from the band leader’s hand and began singing, all while waving a loaded gun around.
That’s how it felt to watch Donald Trump deliver his first speech to a joint session of Congress since his reelection in November.
From the moment he opened his mouth, I prayed for the torture to end.
Instead, Trump droned on for nearly two hours in what can best be described as a cut rate, reality TV version of a Reagan-era State of the Union address.
GET THE MORNING HEADLINES.
I’ll leave it to other news outlets to offer up a detailed account of the president’s endless litany of outright lies and idiotic policy proposals, like his plans to “get Greenland,” reclaim the Panama Canal — the U.S. is “taking it back,” he bellowed — or his sudden obsession with turning Canada into our 51st state. (Interestingly, he’s expressed no interest in annexing Mexico, which he probably regards as just another “shithole” country with too many brown people to suit his white nationalist palate.)
What stood out from Trump’s predictably self-serving speech was how it mirrored the through line of the rank cruelty and manifest incompetence of his so-called merit-based administration.
Trump, for instance, took time in his speech to brag about the slipshod achievements of Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and head of the president’s faux Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which is neither a federal department nor efficient.
While falsely claiming DOGE has uncovered “hundreds of billions” of dollars fraud in the federal government, Trump made no mention of the tens of thousands of federal workers whose lives and careers have been upended in the wake of Musk’s chaotic, scorched earth management style — or the hundreds of thousands more who are likely to find themselves in the unemployment line as his administration advances its goal of fundamentally breaking our government.
He made no mention of the people who Musk “mistakenly” fired — because no effort was made to learn what anyone in government does — and then had to rehire, including some involved in maintaining our nuclear stockpile, or the growing number of staff cuts and services at national parks, or the heinous elimination of food programs for starving children overseas, or Musk’s decision to shut down life-saving AIDS prevention and treatment programs that have saved the lives of millions of people in Africa and elsewhere around the world, or the wave of impending federal job cuts, including veterans, right here in Arizona.
To put it more bluntly, Trump made no mention of the fact that people around the world are dying because of he and Musk’s chainsaw approach to slashing discretionary spending, all in the name of paying for proposed tax cuts that will primarily benefit their billionaire cronies and even Trump’s family.
(Musk, meanwhile, has written on X, the social media site he owns and has transformed into a cesspool of right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis, that the takeover is actually “all about” stopping Democrats from giving money to undocumented immigrants to convince them to vote for Democrats. If that sounds like it’s ripped out of the racist Great Replacement conspiracy theory, which falsely claims that nefarious forces are flooding the U.S. with nonwhite immigrants in order to overtake the country, that’s because it is.)
Never let a drunk, racist uncle, or Donald Trump, take over the microphone. Or your country.
Trump is raping the U.S. economy and the Republican Party is letting him do it, because, as Trump put it himself, when you’re corrupt, authoritarian and “a star, they let you do it. You can do anything…Grab them by the (insert favorite genital here)…Whatever you want!”
Highlighting his own hypocrisy, Trump boasted in his speech about ending “the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies” in federal hiring, even though he’s appointed a cabinet chock full of meritless misfits, screwballs and sycophants whose chief qualification for their jobs has been their willingness to grovel at his feet and gullibly embrace whatever lies he spews.
Taken as a whole, Trump’s second-term cabinet is the worst single example of affirmative action in history.
Welcome to the era of W(DEI)F: White Diversity, Equity and Inclusion First.
In Trumpworld, if you’re a person of color, meh, maybe he’ll let you in — but be prepared to humiliate yourself at the drop of a hat, and don’t expect the federal government to defend your civil rights.
There’s a big difference between the goals of DEI, which actively seeks out a diverse selection of qualified candidates when a job opportunity arises, versus Trump’s practice of hiring mostly white men and women (but really mostly white men) based almost solely on how willing “he” or “she” sucks up to him.
What does all of that suck-up-ed-ness get you? A cushy job in his administration, even if you don’t know what the hell you’re doing.
As if right on cue, the day after Trump addressed Congress, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. told Americans to turn to cod oil, not effective vaccinations, to protect their children from a growing outbreak of measles. Asked how Americans might cope with the rising price of eggs, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins earlier this week said people should start raising their own chickens. And last week, Musk acknowledged that DOGE had “accidentally” cut off funding to treat one of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, Ebola, leading the world’s richest man to quip, “I think we all want Ebola prevention.” But that funding has yet to be restored.
What were my biggest takeaways from Trump’s address to Congress?
- Flatter Donald Trump and you could be set for life, or at least until he gets bored with you.
- Speak truth to Trump and he’ll be your mortal enemy for life.
- Donate $280 million to help get him reelected, as Musk did, and he’ll shower you with praise, whether you deserve it or not — unless, of course, you start to steal his limelight or stop giving him money.
But the biggest takeaway of all?
Never let a drunk, racist uncle, or Donald Trump, take over the microphone. Or your country.
YOU MAKE OUR WORK POSSIBLE.