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00:00It was the longest ever U.S. presidential speech to Congress, over an hour and 40 minutes,
00:17during which Donald Trump took credit for taking swift action on the economy, saying
00:21his tariffs would lead to a little disturbance but long-term gains.
00:25He praised his own action against diversity, declaring a war on wokeness, and repeated
00:30his bid to crack down on migration and take back the Panama Canal and take Greenland one
00:35way or another.
00:37On Ukraine, he mentioned a letter he received from Volodymyr Zelensky and said Russia was
00:41also ready for peace.
00:43Throughout the speech, there was repeated loud applause and standing ovations from Republicans.
00:47Democrats, meanwhile, held up placards reading lies.
00:51And one lawmaker was thrown out of the room.
00:53Here's a quick extract, firstly from Trump's speech.
00:58We've ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across
01:04the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military.
01:12And our country will be woke no longer.
01:24We will invest hundreds of billions of dollars to support Ukraine's defence.
01:30With no security.
01:31With no anything.
01:32Do you want to keep it going for another five years?
01:36Yeah.
01:37Yeah.
01:38You would say Pocahontas says yes.
01:40Well, to examine the weight behind those words, we're joined now by Professor of Political
01:45Science at Hamelin University in Minnesota, David Schultz, and also by our correspondent
01:51in Washington, Fraser Jackson.
01:52Fraser, maybe I'll briefly start with you just to give us, firstly, the main takeaways
01:56from that Lentley address.
01:59Well, seeing as we're a news channel, I think we have to say he didn't really make much
02:03news this time around.
02:05It was mainly a list of accomplishments rather than a looking forward of legislative achievements
02:11that he hopes to achieve.
02:12He did mention a couple of things about rare earth that he's going to increase and ship
02:16building as well, but ultimately not much news.
02:19A couple of foreign policy things that we can discuss later, but he spoke about the
02:23tariffs, the 25% tariffs that have come in, hitting Canada and Mexico as well.
02:29And Donald Trump has started in the last couple of days to say that there will be a little
02:33bit of disturbance.
02:34He repeated that this night, saying there'll be a little bit of disturbance, but we're
02:38okay with that.
02:39It won't be much.
02:40He mentioned especially the farmers in America who might feel the impacts of those tariffs.
02:45And of course, if you cast your mind back to his first time in office, there was a kind
02:49of bailout scheme because of the trade war that he started with China and with the amount
02:54of tariffs that he put on China as well that ultimately ended up costing the US government
02:59about $60 billion in bailouts to the farmers whose livelihoods have been impacted because
03:04of that trade war.
03:06But otherwise, there's not really much substantive in this for middle America.
03:11The cost of living is the number one thing that people are most worried about still.
03:14And of course, it was during the election as well.
03:17And there wasn't too much in that speech about that.
03:20He mentioned the price of eggs, which somehow within the course of this last election became
03:25the kind of yardstick for the cost of living and inflation here in the United States.
03:29He blamed Joe Biden for the cost of those eggs, but he didn't really go into what he's
03:34substantively going to do to tackle those prices.
03:37He kept mentioning tariffs, but of course, tariffs are an inflationary item as well.
03:41So it was a mostly culture war issue, kind of a joint address to Congress.
03:47And of course, they're the kind of things that he's running for the last decade or so
03:50talking about trans rights, the diversity, equity and inclusion programs and things that
03:54he was scrapping in the federal government.
03:56But otherwise, nothing really there for the middle of America in this speech.
03:59Okay, Fraser, stay with us.
04:01But let me bring in Professor of Political Science at Hamelin University in Minnesota,
04:05David Schultz.
04:06David Schultz, I have to say I had pretty much the same takeaway as Fraser Jackson.
04:10Nothing majorly new in this lengthy address to Congress.
04:13But perhaps as an American, you see things differently.
04:16What was the main takeaway as far as you saw it?
04:19Well, the way I would describe it, it was a made for television event that appealed
04:23to his base.
04:24And in the process, there was a list of grievances that he still had, shifting blame for everything
04:30like the price of eggs back to Biden, and also at the same time, trying to claim lots
04:36of credits for lots of things.
04:38That's first.
04:39I've never seen a speech like this in America, where a sitting president goes so far out
04:45of his way to blame a previous president or previous presidents for problems.
04:50You don't see that.
04:51So my first two takeaways.
04:53The other thing is that especially for a European audience, it was very, very thin in terms
05:00of his discussion about Ukraine or about the goals and objectives of American foreign policy.
05:05And with that, not very clear what he really wants to accomplish with all the tariffs and
05:10all the sanctions he wants to do.
05:12So I would agree with both of your assessments that it was short on detail, but it was clearly
05:17a message for his base.
05:19And the fact that he was taunting the Democrats indicated that he knew he was speaking to
05:25one side and not trying to reach across the aisles or reach across of America.
05:30It wasn't an effort to try to be what?
05:33A speech to unite America.
05:35But it played on the divisions that were already there.
05:38I have to say that is one thing that stood out was the visible division in that House
05:42of Representatives.
05:43I mean, we saw a silent protest from many Democrats and even some of them walking out
05:48during that speech.
05:49No, you're absolutely correct.
05:51I mean, we might recall that many years ago when I think it was Obama who was speaking
05:55at one point and someone yelled out about 20 minutes into a speech, you're a liar or
06:00something like that.
06:01And that was kind of a rarity back then, kind of like broke, almost like a shattered a ceiling
06:05or whatever metaphor we're looking at.
06:07Now it seems to be pretty regular that we're getting one side heckling the other and pretty
06:13regular at this point to where we're getting a president, at least with Donald Trump, I
06:17would say, where not even the pretense, not even sort of effort to try to reach across
06:23the aisles, but saying that essentially we have a divide, I'm speaking to my side and
06:28sort of claiming as he did early on that he has this huge mandate, even though it was
06:34still actually an incredibly close election.
06:36So again, it speaks to all that, what I'm going to say, all the problems in American
06:40politics about polarization, winner take all politics, and to a large extent, I still have
06:46to come back and say, remember, Donald Trump's a showman, 17 years hosted or honed his skills
06:53on what the show, The Apprentice, tonight was a showmanship in terms of him trying to
06:57appeal to a particular audience.
07:00And we did see some of those reoccurring themes that appeal to that audience, notably the
07:04crackdown on migration in that area.
07:07Is that the area that Trump has maybe made the most actual moves on so far in his presidency?
07:13Probably the most actual moves, but whether or not he's made the most actual gains is
07:18questionable because if you start to look at the statistics and compare, let us say
07:22the number of deportations under Trump compared to, let's say, Biden or going back to Obama,
07:28his numbers in many ways are not much different.
07:31The techniques are clearly different in terms of sending out ICE, sending out Homeland Security
07:37and doing raids.
07:39But if we're looking at the actual numbers, no.
07:41And if he's claiming as he did in the speech here that the number of people trying to enter
07:45the United States is down, this is part of the curve that was already going back to many
07:50of the Biden policies that had been enacted last year, which were already decreasing the
07:56number of people arriving at the border.
07:58So he does what he does well in terms of claiming credit for what other people have done and
08:05shifting the blame for things that he does not want to take the responsibility for.
08:10Well, indeed, over the, what was it, one hour and 40 minutes, we did see somewhat of a laundry
08:14list of what Trump saw as his achievements over the last six weeks.
08:17But he also mentioned things he has taken the United States out of.
08:20Let's take a very quick listen to that part of the speech.
08:24I withdrew from the unfair Paris climate accord, which was costing us trillions of dollars
08:32that other countries were not paying.
08:35I withdrew from the corrupt World Health Organization.
08:40And I also withdrew from the anti-American UN Human Rights Council.
08:51Listening to that, I mean, firstly, how do Americans feel about the United States withdrawing
08:55from such major international organisations?
08:58And you know, while we often get distracted by what Trump is saying when it comes to Ukraine
09:03and all that, what, has he actually made actions on these other issues like the environment?
09:07OK, so first off, again, we're divided.
09:11If we overall look at American public opinion, they do not support these actions in terms
09:15of pulling out of the Paris accords, the World Health Organization and so forth like that.
09:20But if we kind of parse it a little bit more, again, his base supports a lot of these things.
09:25Democrats and independents do not.
09:27But what also becomes interesting is that clearly he's thinking this is making America
09:32great again.
09:33But if we have to keep in mind that the strength of the United States since post-World War
09:39II has really been the alliances and the organisations that we've created through the United Nations,
09:47through international organisations that have really projected the American image.
09:51And so that becomes kind of the interesting contradiction here is that the isolationism
09:56really is weakening in America as opposed to strengthening it.
10:01Now, in terms of him sort of living up to these promises and saying, OK, I pulled us
10:06out of the Paris accords, it saved us trillions of dollars, again, absolutely no evidence
10:10of that.
10:11And that may be one of the other things we want to be thinking about here is that by
10:15the time the dust settles on this speech, there were a lot of inaccuracies, like, for
10:19example, his claim that we have spent, what, hundreds of billions of U.S. dollars helping
10:24Ukraine is just false in terms of numbers.
10:27His story at one point where he talked about how many people were receiving Social Security
10:32beyond what, age 100 or whatever like that, completely false.
10:36The stories have been falsified.
10:38So a lot of inaccuracies.
10:40But that seemed to be his motive, remember, or his MO, his MO.
10:43Remember, when he was president the first time, I think it was the Washington Post at
10:47one point had catalogued nearly 10,000 falsehoods or lies.
10:52And he's repeating those same misstatements or lies, whatever you want to call it, in
10:57terms of going to his presidency right now, what, after 44 days.
11:02And finally, Professor Schultz, you mentioned there that he did win the popular vote and
11:06the other vote in the United States by a very small margin.
11:10Today, how popular is Donald Trump?
11:14He's basically at about 48, 49, 50 percent, depending on where the polls are.
11:19He basically is where he was on the day of the election, winning just about 50 percent
11:26of the vote, but not quite.
11:27He didn't get a majority.
11:28And his public approval rating is at about 50 percent.
11:32So he hasn't really had a honeymoon period whatsoever in terms of bringing people over.
11:37And there's some indications, depending on what polls you look at at this point, that
11:42some of the public opinion is starting to wobble as the terrorists are starting to impact,
11:46for example, farmers.
11:48There seems to be some indications that the policies are not being supported.
11:53And whether and how that's going to translate over into his own personal approval rating,
11:57we're going to see that over the next few weeks.
11:59Professor Schultz of Hamelin University, thanks so much indeed for your time and joining us
12:03here on France 24.
12:04Well, let us bring back in our correspondent now, Fraser Jackson.
12:07Fraser, just mentioning there one of the other main issues when it comes to Trump's speech,
12:12it is of course the economy, with Trump saying that he's turning things around, though admitting
12:17that the tariffs are going to cause at least short term pain.
12:21Yeah, and again, that's something that he's mentioned slightly more in the last couple
12:27of days.
12:28He's kind of acknowledged that there will be some short term pain for some people in
12:32the American economy.
12:33But of course, Donald Trump has repeatedly said that these tariffs are going to be borne
12:38by the countries that export things to the United States, and that simply doesn't really
12:43play out.
12:44Economists agree that the end user is pretty much always the person that ends up bearing
12:49the cost of those tariffs, absorbing the cost of those tariffs in the long run.
12:54And really, there was an interesting point made by an analyst that I was listening to
12:57last night who said that the people that you have most leverage over in the world tend
13:02to be your allies, because you either have trade agreements with them, security agreements
13:06with them as well.
13:08And if you annoy those allies by slapping things like a 25% tariff on anything they
13:13export to you, that actually all that ends up doing is gnawing away at goodwill.
13:17And of course, Mexico and Canada in particular are the first and second, respectively, largest
13:23trading partners of the United States.
13:26And this has really angered a lot of people on both sides of the border, but especially
13:30the Canadians.
13:31The Canadians are furious about this.
13:33And my friends that live across the border tell me that there is a renewed sense of unity
13:39in Canada, that they like America, they love America.
13:42But this has really angered them.
13:44And they're seeing a widespread boycott of American products now in Canada, with supermarkets
13:49and elsewhere now trying to push people to buy Canadian products or simply not stocking
13:54American products whatsoever.
13:57We've also heard from the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, just a couple of hours ago, who
14:02said that over 1.5 million people get electricity in the United States from Ontario.
14:09And he said he was going to cut them off.
14:11So this is going to be a real-world impact to these people now in America because of
14:16these trade tariffs.
14:17And of course, the price of goods will also likely end up going up as well.
14:21So whether the impact is enough to kind of sway public opinion on Donald Trump and his
14:29approval ratings, of course, remains to be seen.
14:32But Donald Trump at the moment saying that it's because of these tariffs that more companies
14:37are coming home.
14:38Companies like Apple, who are announcing a significant increase of hundreds of billions
14:42of dollars in the United States, and also semiconductors as well, like Taiwan's biggest
14:47semiconductor company, also saying that they're going to invest more money in America as well.
14:53Donald Trump says it's because of the threats of those tariffs that these kind of companies
14:57are doing that as well.
14:59And Fraser, overall, looking back at this speech to Congress, it did seem quite light
15:04on the international relations front.
15:06But towards the end of it, we did hear him mention that letter he'd received from Ukraine's
15:09Vladimir Zelensky, but no major reveal.
15:15Nothing really massive that we were expecting.
15:17Of course, Donald Trump has been running on an America First platform for the best part
15:21of the last decade.
15:22Foreign policy is kind of crowbarred in at the end, despite it being one of his favourite
15:26topics to talk about when you talk to him in person.
15:30He discussed the Panama Canal.
15:31Of course, nothing new about what he said there.
15:34There was one line that did pique my interest, though, when he said good luck to Marco Rubio
15:38when he was dealing with the Panama Canal.
15:41He said to Marco Rubio, now we know who to blame if anything goes wrong, which was said
15:45in a joking manner.
15:47But if you read some of the headlines and talk to some of the sources that I've spoken
15:51to about the relationship that Trump and Rubio have and the change that Rubio has undergone
15:57over the course of the last couple of years, that could be seen as a more telling line.
16:01There was also a line about Greenland.
16:03Of course, Donald Trump wants that to be part of the United States.
16:06Another eye-raising moment was when he said, one way or another, we're going to get it.
16:11And the Danish ambassador was in the audience at Congress there and didn't look too pleased
16:16about that line.
16:18But Ukraine was what we were looking at after that bust-up between Zelensky and J.D. Vance
16:23and the president inside the Oval Office on Friday.
16:27He discussed Ukraine.
16:28He said that they'd sent billions of dollars to Ukraine.
16:32The Democrats applauded that.
16:35Trump then lashed out at those Democrats, saying that they wanted the conflict to continue.
16:38But, of course, once again, Donald Trump got the figures wrong about how much money the
16:42United States has sent to Ukraine.
16:44It's not $350 billion.
16:45It's actually closer to $180 billion, which has been appropriated, and even not all of
16:51that has been sent to Ukraine.
16:53But the news that we did get is that he'd received a letter from Zelensky.
16:57I'll read part of that now.
16:59Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting
17:03peace closer.
17:04Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians.
17:07As Zelensky continued,
17:08My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump's strong leadership to get a peace that
17:13lasts.
17:14We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and
17:19independence regarding the agreements on minerals and security.
17:23Ukraine is ready to sign it at any time that is convenient for you.
17:26Donald Trump said that he appreciated Zelensky sending that letter.
17:29So whether that is enough to put a finer point on the spat that has erupted in the Oval Office
17:36since Friday remains to be seen.
17:38But that minerals deal and how a ceasefire deal shapes up is still going to be discussed
17:42on Thursday by European countries.
17:45And after that discussion, that's when it will go back to the U.S., I'm told, for the
17:49U.S. to kind of rubber stamp it, as it were.
17:51OK, Fraser Jackson in Washington, thanks very much indeed.