Windy speech shows Trump stuck in neutral

His record-long State of the Union speech contained almost no new ideas

Key takeaways: 😉

• Trump’s 2026 State of the Union speech lasted 108 minutes, which is way too long.

• Trump unveiled very few new ideas.

• He thinks the economy is great and voters just don’t notice.

• He’s wrong about that.

• Watch for Trump to interfere with the 2026 midterm elections.

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If you skipped President Trump’s February 24 State of the Union speech, smart move. It was the longest presidential address to Congress ever, which is not the kind of record any president should want to set. It may also have set a record for the lowest substance-to-word ratio in presidential history. In my day-after scan of economic outlooks and Wall Street commentary, I found almost no mention of anything Trump said. Markets see nothing important.

Trump is stuck in neutral. He thinks everything is fine and Americans just need to come around to his sunny view, which is that “we’re winning so much.” He ticked off a bunch of factoids, some of them bogus, that supposedly show a strong economy getting stronger. He kept the fact-checkers busy, as usual.

Americans don’t share Trump’s upbeat view. Trump’s approval rating has dropped below 40% in some polls. In a recent Washington Post poll, 48% said the economy has gotten worse since Trump took office, while only 29% said it has gotten better.

The Pinpoint Press’s Better-Off Index shows that the only people really getting ahead under Trump are those who own a substantial amount of stock and have benefited from a rising market. Even then, the US stock market has mostly flatlined in 2026, underperforming many foreign markets.

Trump and his team think they just need to talk up the economy more to improve voter attitudes and boost Republican odds in this year’s midterm elections. “Trump views the affordability crisis as a messaging issue,” Beacon Policy Advisors explained in a February 25 analysis. “Officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent believe that Americans’ affordability concerns stem from the administration’s failure to tout its wins.”

Trump even arranged a cameo appearance by the gold-medal-winning men’s US hockey team, a rather transparent attempt to piggyback on their Olympic glory. Winners associate with winners, you see.

So Trump and his team are going to keep reminding everybody of the big tax-cut bill he signed last year. There may be another, smaller tax cut bill this year, with the benefits likely flowing to the wealthiest, as they do under last year’s law.

Trump will keep touting new ideas meant to help the little guy, such as banning institutional investors from buying residential homes and some kind of health care plan. The odds of actual legislation on these issues are low, and big changes are unlikely. The point will be to just keep showing people Trump is on the case.

Trump apparently doesn’t realize this approach is a proven loser. President Biden repeatedly tried to assure Americans things were getting better when inflation spiked in 2022 and 2023, and Biden was generally right. But his weak approval ratings never recovered and voters plainly rejected those Democratic pleas when they elected Trump in 2024.

President Obama tried the same approach in 2010, also failing miserably. He bragged about all the great progress America was making as it bounced back from the Great Recession and the 2008 financial crash. Voters thanked him with a “shellacking” in the 2010 midterms, to use Obama’s own word, that gave Republicans huge gains.

Maybe Trump thinks he’s more persuasive than his predecessors. He’s not. You simply cannot talk most people into believing they’re better off than they know themselves to be.

Trump may have a backup plan, which every conscientious voter should pay close attention to. He is clearly beating the drum about fraud in the upcoming midterms, even though US elections are remarkably secure. “The cheating is rampant,” Trump declared, as Republicans stood and roared like hyenas, throwing their support behind an outright lie. Trump urged Congress to pass a law requiring voter ID and other measures that would make voting by registered voters harder.

If Republicans do face steep losses in November, Trump may use his bogus fraud mantra to justify federal intervention meant to block Democratic victories. That’s a subtext of this speech that the White House won’t be highlighting. But it could end up being more important than anything Trump actually said.