The writer is in America
AT NEARLY two hours, the longest in American history, many complained that President Trump’s State of the Union address was too long. I strongly disagree. Indeed, I enjoyed every minute of it and wish it had been longer.
Delivered on February 24, just four days before the combined US and Israeli attack on Iran, surely with that on his mind, I believe it is the best speech he has ever given. It was certainly the most entertaining and satisfying for those of us who are sick to death of political correctness and woke politicians pandering to favoured identity groups.
It is in the nature of such speeches for the president to list his administration’s achievements of the past year. This year Trump was able to recite a long litany of spectacular accomplishments, from securing the US-Mexico border and reducing illegal immigration to considerably lowering crime, inflation and unemployment, while GDP and the market are rising rapidly. The nation-killing and racist ideology of DEI, he told us, is on the ropes and being challenged as never before; its imminent demise, one can but hope, helping raise military readiness and morale, and returning the armed forces to what they were intended for in the first place: to defend America from her enemies and fight in foreign wars when the need arises. No more trans generals in dresses and high heels, it is to be hoped.
Trump also called out the massive Somali fraud in Minnesota that has cost the state’s taxpayers billions. To fight this community-based theft, he announced that Vice President JD Vance would lead a new ‘War on Fraud’. Given the astronomical levels of fraud – not just committed by Somalians living here in Minnesota but also rife among various immigrant communities in other blue states such as Maine, New York and California – such a high-level appointment is badly needed.
For purposes of full disclosure, I support President Trump, voted for him and would vote for him again. He is a deeply flawed man, but his virtues and strengths outweigh his weaknesses. Whether or not he is in the process of saving this nation or just delaying its decline is a matter for debate but without him, or someone who shares his outlook and unqualified love for America and is prepared to continue his policies, the United States is finished and will likely fall and sink into a civilisational abyss of violence, lawlessness, identitarian strife, the further destruction of the family and cultural decadence. At times, it seems we are already almost there.
We saw him at his best on the night of his speech. Charismatic as ever, confident and glib, justly proud of what he has achieved in the first year of his second term, but also hilarious at times. Yes, he mocked Democrats, as he is wont to do, but in a way that made them look ridiculous, which many of them were, self-righteously sitting there, some of the women in white suffrage dresses, arms folded, scowling and pulling silly faces, and wearing ‘F**k ICE’ badges.
At least two among them, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, engaged in rowdy behaviour, yelling that Trump is a ‘murderer’ and a ‘liar’. Trump later suggested that the two women should be institutionalised, a suggestion, I suspect, with which millions of my fellow Americans concur. Increasingly, or so it seems, the Democrats are becoming a party for madmen and women (especially the latter) and for people who appear to have lost their ability to reason.
But it wasn’t just the rowdy behaviour of congressional Democrats that stood out. Many of those watching at home or present in the chamber were appalled by the Democrats’ callous disregard for the ordinary men and women, both civilian and military, that Trump chose to honour, refusing to applaud and stand for widows, grieving mothers, a seriously injured child and two war heroes being awarded the Medal of Honor, the US military’s highest award for valour and gallantry. God bless Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania – the last sane and decent Democrat? – for unhesitatingly torching his party colleagues for their disgusting behaviour. Some of what he said in an interview on Fox News is worth quoting in full:
‘I clapped to recognise the family that lost their daughter, the Ukrainian girl that was stabbed to death in North Carolina. And I stood up and I clapped at that political prisoner from Venezuela. You know, how you can’t celebrate those kinds of things. I also celebrated all the veterans that were in the audience too. And even more of the political things, like Erika Kirk. I stood up and I clapped for her too . . . can’t we just be more kind to a widow? . . . I’m always going to stand up and clap for the things I agree with [Trump] on.’
I’m always going to stand up and clap for the things I agree with him on. What a beautiful statement that is almost like a sentiment from a previous age. To his great credit, Fetterman was the only Democrat to shake Trump’s hand at the end of the evening.
The Ukrainian girl referenced by Senator Fetterman, Iryna Zarutska, had moved to North Carolina seeking refuge from the ravages of war in her native land before being murdered in cold blood on a metropolitan train in Charlotte. Surveillance footage of her having her throat slashed by Decarlos Brown, a serial offender, using a folding pocketknife, and the look of primeval fear on her face, are images that will haunt me for the rest of my life. Trump reprimanded those Democrats in attendance (roughly half of the Democratic lawmakers chose not to attend) for remaining seated when Iryna’s visibly grieving mother appeared. ‘How do you not stand?’ he asked incredulously. Indeed, how do you not?
But you don’t have to share my enthusiasm for Trump to have enjoyed his State of the Union address. If you love America and those brave men and women who risk their lives to defend it, you would have been deeply moved by the sight of 100-year-old retired naval aviator Captain Royce Williams receiving the Congressional Medal of Honor from the very elegant First Lady for his breathtakingly brave solo dogfight with seven Soviet MiGs during the Korean War in 1952, in which he downed four. Again, Democrats sat on their hands. Who could not have been equally moved by Chief Warrant Officer Eric Slover, an army helicopter pilot horribly wounded in the audacious raid that captured Venezuelan President Maduro? He was able to stand only with the help of crutches and a walking stick and looked in terrible pain, and also a little reticent, possibly because such men consider themselves as part of a team and are reluctant to take individual credit. If America is to survive, she will need many more gallant men like Eric Slover.
Still, Democrats continued to sit on their rear ends and did not applaud this man. Nor did they see fit to rise and applaud Charlie Kirk’s widow, Erika, nor even Dalilah Coleman, now seven, who suffered a broken femur and fractured skull at age five after an 18-wheeler tractor-trailer, driven by an illegal migrant let in by Biden and given a commercial driver’s licence by the state of California, ploughed into her stopped car at over 60mph, trapping her in the back seat. So bad were Dalilah’s injuries that doctors removed part of her skull to relieve swelling caused by pressure building in her bruised brain. What kind of person do you have to be not to applaud and stand for such a brave and tenacious little girl? It was hard not to weep when her father, holding her in his arms, kissed her and she kissed him back.
Congressional Democrats Robin Kelly and Yvette Clarke, speaking afterwards on the livestream YouTube channel State of the People, even mocked those servicemen and one woman (Specialist Sarah Beckstrom of the West Virginia National Guard who was awarded a Purple Heart posthumously), who had received military decorations that evening, calling it a parade of medals – ‘you get a medal, you get a medal’, sniggered Clarke, comparing the evening to an awards show.
Disgusting as that may seem, the most revealing moment of the evening, and a moment that spoke volumes about the state of my beloved country, came towards the end of the evening when Trump called upon lawmakers to stand if they believed ‘the first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens’. Again, most Democrats remained seated.
It is a commonplace to say the United States has never been more politically polarised and divided along ideological and cultural lines, at least not since the American Civil War. Living here since 1983 and being a student and teacher of American history, I can attest to the veracity of this. But I can’t help feeling we witnessed another kind of division during Trump’s recent State of the Union speech: that between the decent and the indecent.
