Dozens of congressional Democrats boycotted President Donald Trump’s State of the Union Address on Feb. 24, opting for an alternative resistance rally featuring activists dressed in animal costumes. Some members of the opposition party who actually bothered to show up displayed zero control of their emotions, impotently shouting at and heckling the president on multiple occasions. As for the rest of the glum Democrats, they stood and clapped a small handful of times — but on nearly every policy-related issue, they remained glued to their seats, stone-faced.
Message: We hate this guy and oppose everything he says. Trump decided to use this dynamic to his political advantage, calling attention to the lines his opponents steadfastly refused to applaud. Two such moments were particularly memorable. On immigration, the president issued this challenge to the gathered politicians. In a sane world, this wouldn’t be a controversial sentiment or a “gotcha” question for anyone representing our country. But for Democrats in 2026, it was:
“Tonight, I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.”
Republicans leapt to their feet, roaring their approval. Of course, the first duty of the federal government is to serve its citizens, not people who’ve entered our country illegally. Democrats sat planted in their seats, silent. They could not affirm even that fundamental principle. Trump let them have it, making sure the audience at home understood how radical Democrats have become.
“Isn’t that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself, not standing up,” Trump said. “You should be ashamed of yourself.” In the Trump era, Democrats have become, effectively or explicitly, a pro-illegal immigration party. Their 2020 presidential field unanimously supported taxpayer-funded healthcare for illegal immigrants, and nearly all of them favored decriminalizing illegal border crossings. A prominent Democrat recently refused to concede that a single illegal immigrant should be deported, including violent felons.
There’s more. Oregon Democrats voted en masse in February to block a bill that would require illegal immigrants convicted of felonies to be turned over to federal authorities prior to a pending release. And virtually every Democrat in the chamber — remember, many of the most virulent Trump-deranged members were at the unhinged counterrally down the street — declined to endorse the notion that our government should prioritize its own citizens over law-breaking foreigners. In her official response to Trump’s speech, phony “centrist” Gov. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA), who just implemented pro-criminal “sanctuary-on-steroids” policies in her state, went out of her way to endorse school walkouts on behalf of illegal immigrants and pretended that Immigration and Customs Enforcement is only arresting innocent mothers and children. As the Washington Examiner has reported, roughly 70% of ICE arrests within the last year have targeted illegal immigrants with criminal records. Democrats simply refuse to acknowledge this, and many outright oppose these arrests and deportations.
On another subject, Trump told the appalling story of a regretful and scarred “detransitioner” in the gallery whose gender transition in school had been hidden from her parents while she was a minor. Whatever one thinks of transgender issues more broadly, anti-science experiments on children without parental consent are bona fide madness. It’s also extraordinarily unpopular, for good reason. Here’s how the president laid it out:
“In the gallery tonight are Sage Blair and her mother, Michelle. In 2021, Sage was 14 when school officials in Virginia sought to socially transition her to a new gender, treating her as a boy and hiding it from her parents. Hard to believe, isn’t it? Before long, a confused Sage ran away from home. … After she was found in a horrific situation in Maryland, a left-wing judge refused to return Sage to her parents because they did not immediately state that their daughter was their son. Sage was thrown into an all-boys state home and suffered terribly for a long time. But today, all of that is behind them because Sage is a proud and wonderful young woman with a full-ride scholarship to Liberty University. Sage and Michelle, please stand up. And thank you for your great bravery, and who can believe we’re even speaking about things like this?”
Then came the gauntlet: “Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will. Who would believe that we’re even talking about that? We must ban it, and we must ban it immediately.” Democrats, trapped in the thrall of their extremist activists, made sour faces and withheld their support. Trump again called them out. “Look, nobody [on that side of the aisle] stands up. These people are crazy, I’m telling you,” he said. “They’re crazy.”
It was impossible to miss. Major Garrett of CBS News noted after the speech that Democrats’ knee-jerk loathing of Trump and their ideological extremism made them look, well, crazy. “They can’t even applaud basic commonsense things,” he marveled. Fox’s Bill Melugin also reported that Republicans are preparing to use these visuals against Democrats in the midterm elections. “Every single vulnerable House Democrat should get comfortable re-watching the moment they revealed they’re nothing more than America-hating scum who stayed glued to their seats while President Trump called on protecting American citizens over criminal illegal immigrants,” an NRCC spokesperson said. “The ads write themselves.”
State of the Union addresses have increasingly become spectacles with self-selecting audiences, so Trump getting strong marks from viewers isn’t necessarily a surprise. His supporters were much more likely to be watching than his critics or politically disengaged Americans. A CNN poll found that those who watched approved of the speech by roughly a 2-to-1 margin. Perhaps more interestingly, before Trump’s remarks, CNN’s survey found that 54% of viewers went into the event anticipating that the president’s agenda would move the country in the right direction.
By the end of the night, that number had surged 10 percentage points. So to the extent that persuadable people tuned in, Trump helped move the needle in his direction — probably with Democrats’ help. The opposition party may well win this fall’s elections because that’s what opposition parties historically do under these circumstances. But Democrats appear to remain radical and adrift in a way that threatens to continue harming their electoral prospects for the foreseeable future. If Republicans can deliver on the economy, that would deprive Democrats of their political silver bullet. And a review of their other exotic beliefs may well lead many independent-minded voters to look at Democrats and think to themselves, “These people are crazy.”
