Turns out Donald Trump’s speech last night was a bust
Donald Trump’s biggest record set on Tuesday night was the length of time he spent lying in his joint address to Congress. A lot of Trumpers will probably cite an ABC News poll that showed high approval ratings of his speech among those who watched – but beyond the fact that the number is made up of the relatively small number of people who watched the speech as it aired, it’s important to keep in mind another number from CNN: The audience was 14% more Republican than average, suggesting that even a solid speech from an effective president probably wouldn’t move the needle much in the partisan age we live in. After all, President Biden’s out of the park state of the union address was just over a year ago and didn’t have much impact on the election.
The other problem is that when you take apart the numbers as CNN did, the numbers aren’t particularly great news – with only 44% of viewers, even in that fairly partisan audience, who were very confident in Donald Trump’s spewing of the usual nonsense, all while he never touched on cost of living concerns that got him elected in the first place. It’s a sharp drop from when either Presidents Bush or Obama gave their first joint addresses to Congress by over 20 points – and in line with his fairly poor approval ratings that tanked before the first hundred days of his presidency are up.
James Sullivan is the assistant editor of Brain World Magazine and an advocate of science-based policy making