U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a State of the Union address in the House Chamber of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Feb. 24, 2026. President Trump needs his State of the Union address to assuage voters anxious about the economy, foreign policy and even more tariff turmoil. Facing the lowest approval ratings of his career, President Donald Trump on Tuesday delivered the longest State of the Union address in history, with the former reality television star known for his ability to command attention appearing desperate for a way to revive his political fortunes, tone swinging repeatedly from tedious to angry and back again. What new proposals did pop up in the speech — an idea to reform retirement accounts for workers who don’t have 401(k) plans, for instance — have little chance of becoming law. Most of the speech dragged through his usual false claims of falling prices, multiple wars settled, foreign investment brought in and a complete fantasy description of international trade and tariffs. If Republicans facing a tough midterm election because of continuing voter unhappiness about high prices had hoped Trump would tackle that issue with empathy, they were likely left disappointed. Trump claimed, falsely, that prices were falling and insisted that the blame for high prices should fall on his predecessor, Joe Biden, and his fellow Democrats. “The same people in this chamber who voted for those disasters suddenly used the word ‘affordability,’ a word somebody gave it to him, knowing full well that they caused and created the increased prices that all of our citizens had to endure. You caused that problem. You caused that problem,” he said. Indeed, in tone and content, Trump’s State of the Union address, once considered a marquee event of a president’s year, was largely the same as his other speeches of late, including one purportedly about the economy in Detroit, a prayer breakfast speech in Washington, DC, and a political rally he staged on a military base in North Carolina. Trump filled much of his time on the dais trying to use nonpartisan icons, such as Medal of Honour recipients and the gold-medal-winning US Men’s Olympic Hockey team, to prop up claims of American unity. Minutes later, he would return to bald-faced partisanship, sparring with Democrats who jeered his speech. “They want to cheat. They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat,” he raged at Democratic members sitting in the House chambers. Other sections of the 108-minute speech, though, continued his feuds, including with the Supreme Court, which last week struck down most of his beloved tariffs. “I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis, everything was working well. Countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars,” he lied. In fact, the total amount of tariffs collected under Trump’s unilaterally imposed tariffs was only $175 billion — all of which were collected by American importers. Several recent studies found that Americans bear between 90% and 95% of the burden of tariffs. On one of his weakest issues, the violence committed by masked immigration agents in American cities, Trump did not even mention the shooting deaths of American citizens Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minneapolis. Instead, he attacked Democrats for insisting that immigration agents be reined in and not allowed to wear masks. He equated that position with support for illegal immigrants convicted of violent crimes. “They’re blocking the removal of these people out of our country, and you should be ashamed of yourself,” he told Democrats in the chamber. Trump once again claimed he had “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear weapons last June but then repeated threats that Iran would be struck again if Iran did not agree to a deal. “We wiped it out, and they want to start all over again, and are, this moment again, pursuing their sinister ambitions. We are in negotiations with them. They want to make a deal, but we haven’t heard those secret words: ‘We will never have a nuclear weapon,’” he said. Trump likely meant “sacred words,” which is what he told network TV anchors at a lunch on Friday afternoon. And, in fact, Iran has said repeatedly that it was not building a nuclear weapon. Trump withdrew in his first term from an agreement that had been negotiated under former President Barack Obama that limited Iran’s ability to make weapons-grade uranium and imposed on-site inspections. Trump then boasted about his programmw of extrajudicial killings — defined as war crimes internationally and murder in the United States — of suspected drug smugglers on the high seas. “You probably noticed that we very seriously damaged their fishing industry, also,” he joked, smiling. “Nobody wants to go fishing anymore.” Speaking on the fourth anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Trump essentially glossed over the matter, saying only that he wanted to end the deaths but without blaming Russia’s dictator Vladimir Putin for conducting the largest, deadliest war in Europe since World War II. Trump instead bragged about ending U.S. military aid to Ukraine. “Everything we send over to Ukraine is sent through NATO, and they pay us in full. They pay us totally in full,” he said. In the end, though, whether the speech, the analysis by observers or the rebuttal by Virginia’s newly elected Democratic Gov. Abigail Spanberger will matter at all within a few days or even hours is unclear. Americans generally have paid less attention to the event in recent years, and Trump, who has yet to give a joint address shorter than an hour, likely did not help his case by going on for nearly two.