Let us jump straight into it.
What did you make of the State of the Union?
Well, you know, I mean, it was a real whiplash experience,
'cause there were the moments when he was appealing for unity,
you know, saying he wanted to take a bipartisan approach,
and then there were the moments when he was lying.
Um, and essentially baiting Democrats
with those, like, descriptions of abortion laws
that were entirely exaggerated.
And then there was the whole border.
You know, which he... You would think,
after the longest shutdown in federal history,
he might temper his language a little bit, he might retreat,
but it was as blood-soaked and lawless and, you know,
fantastical, in terms of its relation to the truth as ever.
Right, but it seems like Trump has a very simple message,
and that is: "Let us all come together doing what I want."
That seems pretty much what his message is.
-(applause) -I would, um...
I think that's fair; I would just elongate it a little bit.
"Let us all come together doing what I want
-and constantly praising me." -Oh, yes, of course.
I think that's part of it, too, yeah.
I mean, when-when... I mean, that was probably
one of my favorite moments-- we talked about it earlier--
was when... when women stood up in Congress and it was
the Democrats, who were newly... the freshman Democrats,
and he was like, "Yeah, that's what we did."
Yeah. They did not do that. No, I mean, this was great,
'cause everyone was wondering how was he going to be affected,
by Nancy Pelosi literally being on his shoulder.
Like, if you looked at the right camera angle,
she was like this head on his left shoulder.
Right? And you thought, is that gonna freak him out?
Is it gonna put him off of his modest game?
And the answer was, he was gonna pretend to be a feminist
for the evening. He was gonna take credit
for all the women in white sitting there.
And the truth is, if the Republican candidates
whom he had advocated for had won,
there would not be a record number of women in the House.
-Wow. -So that was, um...
His inner feminist is fraudulent, let's say.
To say the least. To say the least.
-Yeah. -Um, the-the lies in and around the border.
It was particularly egregious.
I mean, he came in and basically went
from "the state of the Union is strong"
to "America is dying very quickly
"because immigration is uncontrolled
and we need to stop it with a wall."
And "the caravans are coming.
I'm sending the troops to the border, because..."
"The caravans are coming.
"We just found out now that they're coming.
-There's a new one coming." -Yeah.
Like, like, like, at what point do you think...
like, how do you even think
Democrats begin to combat this narrative?
Is there a thing, or do they just have to legislate
-around what Trump believes? -Well, I mean, so far
they've been fighting it with facts,
and the American public is on their side.
If you look at opinion polls, Americans don't think
we should do anything and everything to have
a border wall, they blame Donald Trump for the shutdown.
So, so far Democrats are winning,
and that's why I think it was so unnerving
to have Nancy Pelosi's head on his left shoulder.
Right. When you look at, um, some of the people they cut to
in specific moments, speaking about issues, you know,
there was the one cut where they went to Bernie Sanders,
specifically, when he talked about socialism,
and like, "Socialism will not live in this..."
and they cut to Bernie, and he's just like... (groans)
-He had, like, flop sweat, yeah. -Right. It...
Do you feel like... does he write those for specific people,
or do you think the news just finds a narrative
and they go, "This is who this line best applies to"?
I think all of the above.
But I think the socialist line was...
there is... there are a number of Democrats--
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez among them--
who wear the label "Democratic socialist."
-Right. -The "socialist" part of that label is something
that Republicans are seizing on, and I think now,
as we get toward the 2020 campaign,
you're gonna hear Donald Trump talking more and more
about Democrats' desire to turn America
into a socialist country.
-Which is, of course, absurd. -Right.
One of his biggest "achievements"
that he touted in the evening was that we are not at war
because of him, 'cause in his opinion,
we would have been at war were it not for him.
And North Korea has not done anything because of him.
But that's not what
his intelligence officials have said.
Well, first of all, it was so surprising
to hear Donald Trump give himself so much credit.
Because usually he's so modest about these things.
-(laughter, applause) -So that...
That sort of threw me off entirely, yeah.
But, um, no, it is fascinating, 'cause just a week ago,
his intelligence chiefs were giving public testimony,
and they were basically saying the opposite
of half of what he said in the speech tonight.
So you got to give the president credit.
He sticks to what he wants to say
even if the facts completely contradict him.
Right. Going forward, do you think this is gonna be
one of those nights where people go, "Oh, he was presidential,
"he... he looked like a president up there
and he's ready to lead this country,"
or do you think the facade of Donald Trump
reading words off a prompter has now...
doesn't affect people as much anymore?
I'll answer your question with a question:
How soon does he begin to tweet? That's when...
that's when the presidential aura goes completely away.
-Oh, that's powerful. -Teleprompter Trump
and Twitter Trump are two entirely different people.
What's interesting is, I find that his tweets
directly correlate to what they say
about his speech on the news.
So you find if everyone on cable news says
this was a great speech, Donald Trump is gonna tweet out
wonderful things in the morning, saying, "Let's come together."
And if you write something horrible about him,
he's going to tweet.
So the power is in your hands.
Oh, wow. I don't know how to deal with that, Trevor.
Well, thank you so much for being on the show.
Excited to have you on again.
Frank's columns appear in The New York Times
every Sunday and Wednesday.
Really smart, really funny guy.
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go to newyorktimes.com/bruniletter.
Frank Bruni, everybody.
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