Trump's State of the Union address: Screaming, roaring, then speaking mischief

Watani

14-03-2025

Six weeks after he took oath as the 47th US President, President Donald Trump gave his State of the Union address to a joint session of Congress on 4 March. He presented his local and foreign policies, including decisions and policies he intended to adopt. President Trump spoke for some 100 minutes in the longest address to a joint session of Congress in at least 60 years. His supporters applauded and cheered for him all through the address.
Notwithstanding, other political analysts and experts expressed their shock at the essence of the address which, as they saw it, had overlooked the needs of Americans on several levels, and had recklessly rushed to jeopardise American foreign relations and destroy a long legacy of mutual interests between the US and its allies. This all came under the pretext of the President's devious motto 'America first'. His State of the Union address brings to mind the Arabic folk saying: 'He screamed and roared, then spoke mischief'.
Today I review the opinion voiced by two American politicians: Senator Bernie Sanders, 83, who is the senior US senator from Vermont; and Richard Wolff, 82, economist and professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
Senator Bernie Sanders: 'We are living in a pivotal moment in our country's history, facing unprecedented challenges… President Trump has been very effective in creating what I would call a parallel universe for his supporters; a set of ideas that either have no basis in reality or in the great scheme of things are nowhere near the most important concerns of the American people… One way that he does that is through the concept of the big lie; you say something that is grossly false, say it over and over again, and have right-wing social media blast it out endless times until people actually believe it. Then, rather than address the real issues facing the American people, the struggles that the American people are facing, we find ourselves wasting endless amounts of time discussing Trump's absurdities… It is a masterful effort to deflect attention away from the most important issues facing the people of our country; issues that Trump and his billionaire friends do not want to address because it is not in their financial interests to do so. Trump gave his State of the Union speech tonight, but if you listen closely, that speech had very little to say about the State of the Union, about what is really going on in our country, especially for working families… Think back six weeks ago when Trump was inaugurated for a second term as President, standing right behind him were the three wealthiest men in this country Mr [Elon] Musk, Mr [Jeffrey] Bezos and Mr [Mark] Zuckerberg, and standing behind them were 13 other billionaires who Trump had nominated to head major government agencies… It is there for all to see, the Trump administration is not hiding it, the Trump administration is a government of the billionaire class by the billionaire class and for the billionaire class… This is a government that couldn't care less about ordinary Americans and working families… I heard Trump speaking for 90 minutes tonight, I didn't hear one word from him about the economic reality facing 60 per cent of our people… Everyone knows that our healthcare system is broken, it is dysfunctional, and it is outrageously expensive… Mr President, we have nearly 800,000 Americans who are homeless, over 20 million of our people spend more than half of their limited income on housing. We have a major housing crisis in America, everyone knows it apparently except you… In your speech tonight I didn't hear you mention the housing crisis today in America… For the first time in our 250-year-history, we have a president who is turning his back on democracy, and allying us with authoritarianism.'
Professor Richard Wolff: Let's begin with the firing of all these public employees; this is not about efficiency, and it never was efficiency… Firing 50 to 60 per cent of people in a short amount of time, you're not becoming efficient you're just taking a meat cleaver… This is not about efficiency, this is a political game to make Mr Trump look good to the billionaires he knows he needs to please to keep his game, his position, and his power going… Let me turn next to the extraordinary events that were referred to in the speech. We've all been following the destruction of the alliance the United States used to have; an alliance very close with what are called the G7: Japan, Canada, Britain, France, Germany and Italy, with Mexico a close second… This alliance is now disintegrating and the President ought to have talked about why that's happening… Instead of prancing around like his Mr tough guy, putting America first… Everything about our alliance starts at the end of World War II… In 1945, the United States was the only combating country left standing, contrary to a destroyed economy in Britain, France, Germany and Russia… The US dollar became the world's currency… There were problems, our ally in fighting the German Nazis was the Soviet Union, and we were now scared of them, so we converted them from ally into enemy… Eastern Europe was already part of what we called then the Soviet bloc, so the United States basically said to Western Europe: 'Here's a deal, we're going to make an alliance, we're going to call it NATO, and in that alliance we're going to be the dominant military force, you don't have to have a serious army, because we'll take care of that for you… You don't have to spend money you Europeans, here's what you can do with the money that you don't have to spend on defense. You can use it to give your working classes a wonderful social welfare state, as good or better than what workers in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe can afford to give themselves, and that way we'll defeat communism'… That has all changed now; the Soviet Union is gone, Russia is a capitalist society and says so, and the socialist and communist movements inside Europe are much weaker than they were in 1945… It [US] is not the only economic power, in fact it has already been equalled and is in the process of being surpassed by China and its allies who are now a bigger, richer economic force than the United States… Do our leaders talk to us about it? No, they pretend it isn't there; 'BRICS is nothing', Mr Trump said a few weeks ago… China and BRICS now are a bigger economic bloc than the United States in the G7. But even more important, China and BRICS form about 55 to 60 per cent of the world's population, the United States is 4.5 per cent of the world's population. You can't overcome that no matter how many missiles you've got… You know how desperation shows? Well in Mr Trump's case, it is by turning on your allies, you're so desperate you cut off your relationship with Canada and Mexico, you cut off your relationship with Western Europe… And in your desperation, you're actually becoming weaker… We live at a crucial historical moment, but listening to Mr Trump is a little make belief denial assertion, but no honest confrontation with the realities that are screaming for attention before we all go down, because we haven't solved them.'
Watani International
14 March 2025 Comments
comments