Commentary: Big Tent Ideas

JENNY BETH MARTIN: Trump Delivers Electric Congressional Speech While Democrats Embarrass Themselves

Screenshot/CSPAN

Since taking the oath of office six weeks ago, President Trump has moved so quickly to put his stamp on government policies that one could be forgiven for having missed an action or two he’s taken.

Not to worry — in his Tuesday evening speech to a joint session of Congress, he opened with a quick recap — and what a recap it was.

As Trump spoke of his actions in office — nearly 100 executive orders signed, and more than 400 executive actions taken — he demonstrated how important is the choice Americans make every four years. In just 43 days, he reminded us, he’s issued executive orders declaring a national emergency on our southern border; deployed the U.S. military and Border Patrol to end the invasion of our country; frozen all federal hiring, all new federal regulations, and all foreign aid; terminated what he called “the ridiculous ‘green new scam’”; withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord, the World Health Organization, and the U.N. Human Rights Council; ended former President Biden’s environmental restrictions, including his “insane electric vehicle mandate”; and directed that for every new regulation, 10 old regulations must first be eliminated.

And that was just at the top of the speech.

Trump spoke for 99 minutes, breaking Bill Clinton’s record for the longest presidential speech to a joint session of Congress, yet he left his audience hungry for more.

An example: An early applause line echoed a taunt from the campaign trail: “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation to secure the border,” Trump said, pausing with Johnny Carson’s sense of comedic timing. “But it turns out all we really needed … was a new president.”

Cue a wildly boisterous response from the Republican side of the aisle (and, assuredly, from the vast majority of the home viewing audience).

In fact, the Republican side of the aisle got a good cardio workout Tuesday evening, with members of Congress regularly jumping to their feet for standing ovations.

The Democrat side of the aisle, by contrast, sat stony-faced and glum, even through Trump’s introduction of his special guests — including a 13-year-old brain cancer survivor whose greatest wish was to become a police officer, and who was made an “agent” of the Secret Service right there at the speech, or the high school senior (the son, grandson, and great grandson of veterans) whose law enforcement officer father was slain in the line of duty, and whose wish to be accepted at West Point was granted by Trump on the spot.

How anyone, even as great a political opponent of Trump as California’s newest U.S. senator, Adam Schiff, could sit on his hands and maintain the straight-ahead-stare stone face while the rest of the chamber applauded wildly for those guests was remarkable.

The political theater, too, was remarkable. Trump may reveal himself to be one of our greatest presidents because of the depth of his understanding of the television medium and how to use it to his political advantage.

It is said that John F. Kennedy, young and dashing, was the first president to master the television medium; Trump’s understanding of the medium eclipses Kennedy’s. Trump’s mastery of the medium is so great that he even used the Kennedy in his cabinet (the nephew of the slain president, no less!) to score points with a jab at his opponents.

Perhaps my favorite line of the night was when President Trump said, “And in the near future, I want to do what hasn’t been done in 24 years: balance the federal budget. We are going to balance it.”

The Tea Party movement has been working for a balanced budget since its birth 16 years ago.

Thanks to the efforts of the Department of Government Efficiency, finding all kinds of wasteful spending (“$22 billion from H.H.S. to provide free housing and cars for illegal aliens,” “$45 million for diversity, equity, and inclusion scholarships in Burma,” “$40 million to improve the social and economic inclusion of sedentary migrants,” for example), we can get a good start on balancing the budget.

This was easily the best of the five State of the Union-type speeches Trump has delivered to the Congress. His delivery was disciplined; his tone grave when called for, and respectful throughout. His text was organized, and his choice of guests to illustrate the larger points he wished to make would have made Mike Deaver — the inventor of The Skutnik — envious.

Of course, the task of delivering on a speech like this is made easier when there’s so much good news to report. Whether we’re talking about the success in shutting down the flow of illegal aliens across the border (down to historic lows in just the first month), or in unleashing the American economy by removing large swaths of the regulatory burden attached to it, or finally, through his Department of Government Efficiency, taking a chainsaw to the established bureaucracies of The Swamp, Trump has demonstrated the power of a determined and dynamic executive – exactly what the Founders foresaw.

“Energy in the executive is a leading character in the definition of good government,” wrote Alexander Hamilton in Federalist 70. By Hamilton’s standard, Trump’s government is good – very good.

Jenny Beth Martin is Honorary Chairman of Tea Party Patriots Action

The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of the Daily Caller News Foundation.