The real State of the Union

By his extraordinary standards, Donald Trump's third State of the Union address on Tuesday night was a relatively tame affair. For every medal presentation and previously unannounced awarding of a brigadier generalship, there was a Vox-approved economic statistic. It was a corporate product, meant for casual fans.

The diehards, old comrades of Eternal Trumpism who had been expecting a glorious Festival of Innocence for the Hero-Son of the Republic, had to wait for his address to Republican lawmakers on Thursday afternoon. This was Trump's Basement Tapes, the unofficial product that people care about more than the real thing anyway and talk about until it finally becomes part of the catalogue.

It was seriously, deeply weird. I cannot believe that four and a half years after the escalator speech I am still saying this, but it's true: It is insane that this man ever became president of the United States.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Trump began his remarks, not with the beginning of the Democrats’ impeachment inquiry, but before the beginning, with Barack Obama and all the things that would have happened if partisan roles were reversed (e.g., lots of the president’s enemies going to jail). It is true that it is difficult to imagine the media establishment in this country shrugging at the idea of FBI agents casually exchanging text messages about preventing Obama's election.

Here are some other things that are difficult to imagine: The president of the United States suggesting in a live nationally televised speech that "a lot of wives wouldn't give a damn" if their husbands were the victims of assassination attempts or declaring that a member of the House who had been shot "looks better" after he "got whacked" [sic] and then comparing the latter's prowess as a second baseman on the Congressional baseball team unfavorably with that of the Yankees great Bobby Richardson; speculating that another GOP congressman who doesn't wear jackets is "obviously very proud of his body" (which is constantly being "grabbed" by championship collegiate wrestlers) and that another "goes down into dungeons and basements"; thanking the wife of yet another prominent Republican legislator for getting on a bus and making speeches defending his — that is, the now duly elected president's — remarks about grabbing women's genitals; asking questions like "Why isn't United Kingdom [sic] paying?"

One could go on. Trump summed up the 2016 presidential election and two years of the special counsel investigation with one sentence: "We first went through Russia, Russia, Russia. It was all bullshit." Then he told us about Chuck Grassley's scary voice, about how "difficult" it can be working with Mike Lee, about how easy it would be to impeach George Washington, about how Kevin McCarthy is going to be the next speaker of the House, about how "We have a couple of women who became stars," about his wonderful cabinet and how they are, can you believe it, "running their various bureaucracies." He said that it was a time to "celebrate great warriors."

This was what the serious fans and collectors wanted. It was a freakish performance, an hour-long improvisation on a series of increasingly fantastical themes. It was deeply unedifying. It was also impossible to turn off.

Which Trump are we likely to see more of during the general election campaign? His advisers would no doubt prefer the State of the Union version: a slickly produced, market-researched approximation of the real thing. There is no question that his most enthusiastic supporters — not necessarily the people whose votes will matter most in November — definitely want the bootleg stuff.

It's hard not to guess which one the man himself prefers.

Want more essential commentary and analysis like this delivered straight to your inbox? Sign up for The Week's "Today's best articles" newsletter here.