Donald Trump’s State of the Union deal with was the longest ever given. However to know its core objective — arguably, the core objective of his presidency — you want solely to listen to one line.
It got here throughout a dialogue of the SAVE Act, a Republican invoice designed to fight the fictional scourge of noncitizen voting. Democrats, Trump claimed, solely opposed the invoice as a result of “they wish to cheat.” After which he took it a lot additional.
“Their coverage is so unhealthy that the one method they will get elected is to cheat,” Trump stated on Tuesday night time. “We’re going to cease it. Now we have to cease it.”
Take into consideration that for a second. That is the president of america, chatting with the nation in a ritualized nationwide deal with, claiming that the opposition celebration shouldn’t be solely flawed on coverage however basically illegitimate, a lot in order that in the event that they win an election it have to be as a result of they cheated.
Taken actually, that’s the president saying that the said coverage of his administration is stopping the opposition from successful any future election.
We’re all so used to wading by means of Trump’s sea of hyperbole that it’s simple to push previous a bald-faced declaration of authoritarian intent. And to be clear, I don’t suppose the SAVE Act — or anything Trump has proposed up to now — might really lock Democrats out of energy. There’s a actual hole between what he’s saying and what he’s able to doing.
Nonetheless, we have now superb motive to suppose that Trump actually does imagine that Democrats can’t win with out “dishonest.”
When he final misplaced an election, in 2020, he claimed — and has continued to falsely insist — that the competition was stolen. His supporters took this so severely that, after a fiery Trump speech on the White Home on January 6, they marched on the Capitol constructing and ransacked the very chamber by which he spoke tonight.
He even referenced these grievances within the State of the Union, saying “this needs to be my third time period, however unusual issues occur.”
Trump’s vitriol is completely different from the “regular” partisanship of pre-Trump State of the Unions. Prior presidents would possibly assault, and even mock, the opposite celebration’s coverage concepts. However they might deal with their opponents as political rivals: as folks they disagreed with who had been nonetheless companions within the shared challenge of democracy.
In some ways, that’s the self-esteem of all the State of the Union custom: that the president, in talking earlier than Congress, is giving an accounting of his actions to the nation as an entire, divided in opinion however united in objective.
However Trump doesn’t see Democrats as opponents. He sees them as enemies.
I imply “enemies” right here within the particular sense utilized by interwar German authorized theorist Carl Schmitt. In his view, the liberal thought of politics — a group of political equals engaged in a shared challenge of collective governance — was a fantasy. For Schmitt, politics at all times comes all the way down to a division between pals (these in your group) and enemies (these outdoors it, who could also be legitimately excluded from political life and even killed).
Schmitt’s considering has loved a revival amongst MAGA intellectuals, a mirrored image in a part of the motion’s more and more Manichean view of American politics. Democrats, on this telling, will not be simply flawed; they’re evil, an inner scourge bent on the destruction of America as we all know it.
And certainly, this was how Trump talked about Democrats within the State of the Union.
“These persons are loopy. I’m telling you, they’re loopy. Boy, we’re fortunate we have now a rustic with folks like this,” he stated. “Democrats are destroying our nation, however we’ve stopped it, simply within the nick of time.”
At many occasions throughout the rambling speech, Trump sounded optimistic, even sunny. However make no mistake: It’s this darkish Schmittian imaginative and prescient that dwells on the coronary heart of his politics.
