Unlike a lot of sanctimonious types on Twitter, the core Blabbermouth team—Dan, Eli, and Rich—will be watching Trump’s State of the Union address and offering heaps of quality commentary shortly after the performance. You should watch along with us. The show starts right here on Slog at 6 p.m. PST.

Now, some think tonight’s State of the Union address will be yet another meaningless media spectacle, a useless partisan exercise that benefits cable news and no one else. After all, the argument goes, White House aides assure us that Trump will announce no new policy this evening. The theme is supposedly “unification,” but nobody thinks the most divisive figure in political history will convincingly make the case for bipartisan cooperation. And if the bar for success is just Trump reading a teleprompter without verbally sieg heiling, then why should anyone dignify this empty political exercise with our valuable time and attention?

The answer is: You don’t have to! But you do have to read our take on the speech. Sorry. Doctor’s orders. See you soon!

xo

And here we go…

DAN (6:05 PM): Just tossing this up before SCROTUS comes in…

First lady Melania Trump did not react well to allegations that her husband, President Donald Trump, paid the porn star Stormy Daniels $130,000 on the eve of the 2016 election to stay silent about an alleged 2006 affair, The New York Times reports. The allegations have “roiled” the couple’s tumultuous relationship more than almost any other episode between them, according to the Times.

And this…

A cuckquean or cuckqueen is the gender-opposite of a cuckold, derived from Middle English (1562 AD). A cuckquean is a wife with an adulterous husband.

Now let’s watch the shithole show together, shall we?

ELI (6:21 PM): Well, the sniffing from the 2016 presidential debates is back and stronger than ever. And so far the president is perhaps breaking new ground in platitudes-per-minute, but not much else. He just talked about the members of Congress who were shot at a friendly baseball game, and I waited for this to lead to some small nod toward common-sense gun laws… And of course I’m still waiting. Instead, I just heard: “If there is a mountain, we climb it. If there is a frontier, we cross it. If there is a challenge, we tame it…” Unless, of course, that challenge is way too many Americans killing other American with our way-too-many guns.

DAN (6:28 PM): It’s not just the sniffing, Eli. So far he’s managed to mispronounce Obama (“Opama”) and promise to “make American great again — for all Americas.” There are just two: North and South. And about his shiny new catchphrase…

President Donald Trump seems to have borrowed the catchphrase for his first State of the Union — a “New American Moment” — from an unlikely source: Hillary Clinton. Clinton, whom Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential election, used the phrase in a 2010 speech to herald the foreign policy she was pursuing on behalf of President Barack Obama as secretary of state.

It’s going to be a long, long speech.

DAN (6:46 PM): So Trump just rolled out a proposed policy change that would’ve been very, very welcome in, oh, 1984, at the height of the AIDS crisis. He wants the FDA to allow Americans with terminal illnesses to use experimental drugs — sounds great. But since experimental treatments aren’t covered by almost all health insurance plans, and since the Trump administration is doing everything it can to take health insurance away from Americans who have it and/or make health insurance more expensive, who is going to pay for these experimental treatments? Who will be able to afford them? Trump called it “The Right to Try.” But without access to drugs… without health insurance plans that cover experimental treatments… and without the $$$ to buy the drugs/treatments out-of-pocket… this is a “right” that will exist in theory for most Americans and in practice only for the wealthiest Americans. Also, too: our health care system is obscene, Obamacare was a Republican proposal designed to blunt calls for single payer, and Donald Trump is a lying asshole.

RICH (6:53 PM): Trump hasn’t sounded this sedate since the “pussy grabber” apology, but his dog whistle is loud as it ever was. His multiple mentions of respecting the flag, of sharing the flag, of “proudly standing for the national anthem” = “black people aren’t citizens and they’re tearing this country apart despite all the jobs they have now.” (Tim Kaine stood and clapped loud for the national anthem line, by the way, the fucker.) Trump’s (and other Republicans’) obsession with black unemployment—which is at an all-time low following an 8-year trend that started during the Obama administration—is their way of delegitimizing protest against police brutality, housing discrimination, and systemic racism. And—as Dan has already mentioned on his Twitter machine—Trump’s line about taking “historic actions to protect religious liberty” is evangelical for “we still hate queers.” And, of course, turning the details of MS-13 gang violence into political spectacle is Republican for “Mexicans are rapists.” And saying “we” want “our poor” and “our youth” to have “their chance” to rise is Trumpian for “white genocide is real.” Fuck this motherfucker forever.

Also, apropos of nothing, I just realized that Trump’s mouth is upside-down.

DAN (6:55): He just mispronounced “creed,” and then moved on to heaping praise on an ICE agent.

ELI (7:00 PM): “Americans are Dreamers, too.” There, in one sentence, is tonight’s central ploy. Over and over again, Trump is trying to cast whatever progressives might be trying to defend—in this case, immigrant rights—as not just un-American, but as a sinister attempt to purposefully ignore the needs of “real” Americans. It’s an old strategy. It’s just being much more baldly deployed tonight.

ELI (7:08 PM): Someone needs to do something about the opioid crisis! Hm… maybe the guy who ran on it, who promised long ago to address it, and who’s now been in office for more than a year?

RICH (7:09 PM): Also, someone needs to move the teleprompter closer to him. I can’t stand to watch him squint while he’s using the voices he uses when he has absolutely no idea what he’s saying.

DAN (7:25 PM): My legal recreational pot lozenge is really kicking in. Take that, Jeff Sessions, you lying racist perjured creepass elf.

RICH (7:30 PM): Trump is spending an awful lot of time talking about how much he wants to kill and torture people and enlarge the war(s) effort. When he said we needed to keep a nuclear arsenal due to the proliferation of weapons, he paused for a round of applause (which thankfully didn’t come). He bragged about signing an order to keep Guantanamo open and annihilating terrorists. All of this pseudo hyper-masculine grandstanding will make America less safe, just as much as keeping Guantanamo open will make us less safe. Take it from the foreign policy authorities quoted in this incredible piece in the Atlantic:

“Nothing has hurt America’s image and standing in the world—and nothing has undermined the global effort to combat nihilistic terrorism—than the brutal torture and dehumanizing actions of Americans in Abu Ghraib and in other prisons (secret or otherwise). America can win the fight against terrorism only if it acts in ways consistent with the values for which it stands; if its behavior descends to the level employed by the terrorists, then we have all become them instead of us.”

And all of this from a man who promised to put America first and bring the troops home during his campaign.

DAN (7:31 PM): It’s over! Our one-hour-and twenty-one-minute national nightmare — Trump’s first SOTU — is over. Longest SOTU address in history. Meanest and pettiest too.

ELI (7:33 PM): Remember when State of the Union addresses used to be long lists of actual accomplishments?

DAN (7:34): Instead of race-baiting, gay-bashing, war-mongering, xenophobic horseshit? And a talking head on NBC just called the speech “optimistic, hopeful, and conciliatory.” She must be higher than I am. So, yeah, I’m not sticking around for the post-speech analysis.

RICH (7:40 PM): Pundits are on the television now talking about Trump’s tone. “He was tired,” some say. “He was calm,” others say. He was none of those things. He was using the tone you use when you’re reading off letters during a fucking eye exam—because that’s all he was doing. He was just trying to read in public without breaking down into the openly racist dissembler he is.

Rich Smith is The Stranger's former News Editor. He writes about politics, books, and performance. You can read his poems at www.richsmithpoetry.com

Eli Sanders was The Stranger's associate editor. His book, "While the City Slept," was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He once did this and once won...