Maddow: Trump 'OFFERED VERY LITTLE' despite speech's length

It is midnight now on the East Coast. You're alive. We have all just outlasted the longest State of the Union in history. It didn't kill us. We did it. We're alive. We're sentient.

Nobody can take that away from you. It itself is an accomplishment. Despite talking for more than an hour and 47 minutes, the longest State of the Union address ever in U.S. history and by far, President Donald Trump offered very little in the way of policy.

If you were like me, you might have even missed what was maybe the main thing he offered. Thankfully, Lawrence O'Donnell was able to get in there and dig it out of the speech and then succinctly nut it up as trading in the income tax for tariffs, LOL. This was not a State of the Union that will be remembered for presidential proposals. In addition to the weird sort of digressions and no policy, it may be remembered just for his awkward verbal cul-de-sacs, like this one about his dad.

Think of it in recorded history, the lowest number in over 125 years, year 1900. In fact, substantially before my wonderful father, I had a wonderful father, Fred, before he was born, substantially before he was born. That's a long time ago. He wouldn't like me to say that, but that's a long time ago.

So there was stuff like that. The president also shouting a lot through a lot of his speech a number of times in ways that stretched the capacity of his microphone to handle it. There were many also long, sort of gruesome descriptions of violent deaths and injuries, which he seemed to relish describing in detail, with a lot of ad-libbing. There were also his repeated attacks on Democratic lawmakers in the chamber, screaming at one point loudly that they were crazy.

DONALD TRUMP, President of the United States of America, said in a statement to CNN, at one point loudly that they were crazy. Isn't that a shame? You should be ashamed of yourself not standing up. You should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities.

Tonight's address may ultimately be remembered for the indelible image of Democratic Congressman Al Green silently holding up a sign in the House chamber that said, "'Black people aren't apes.'" A reference to Trump posting a

video recently on social media depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. That said, perhaps in the long run, tonight will be remembered

for the Democratic response. Responses to State of the Union addresses are very difficult, notoriously. But tonight's from Abigail Spanberger was very

good and, thus far at least, seems to have been very well received. A punchy, clear, effective speech from the new moderate Democratic governor of Virginia,

Abigail Spanberger. She essentially kicked off her party's midterm election pitch by taking aim, among other things, at Trump's violent immigration raids, his chaotic economic policies, and, bluntly, his corruption.

Who benefits from his rhetoric, his policies, his actions, the short list of laws he's pushed through this Republican Congress. Somebody must be benefiting. He's enriching himself, his family, his friends. The scale of the corruption is unprecedented. There's the cover-up of the Epstein files, the crypto scams, cozying up to foreign princes

for airplanes and billionaires for ballrooms, putting his name and face on buildings all over our nation's capital. This is not what our founders envisioned, not by a long shot.

From the Democratic response again by Governor Abigail Spanberger of Virginia. Couple of our new colleagues have joined us today, tonight, and it's going to be a long night still. Claire McCaskill is here. Eugene Daniels. Claire, what was your reaction

to what you saw tonight?

You know, I was thinking about, first of all, there were a lot of Democrats that weren't there. Yeah. I don't know if you guys noticed, but you'll remember this Lawrence that the ambassadors usually sit in Folding chairs in the aisle because there's not room for them in the chairs

I noticed some of the ambassadors very excited because they were sitting where normally senators sit, you know They were all like my god. We got real chairs on the floor. Nobody's here. I noticed no one was there I noticed that it felt like a game show More than a presidential show. Or an award show. Yeah. Like I was thinking he was going to say, now look under your chair.

There's something for you there. And it would not instill confidence in anybody watching this that this was the guy that we want in charge, deciding whether or not we're going to bomb Iran and go into war in the most dangerous neighborhood in the world, especially the Republicans. You know, you would think at this point they would want him to give a speech that would lead them out of the thicket.

Instead, they're going, hey, we're going to follow you right in there. Let's go deeper in the woods and see how deep we can go in there and never come out again politically. It was fascinating to me. And then finally, the thing that struck me were the smirks of Vance and Johnson sitting behind him.

Like, they thought it was kind of a joke. You know, they were, oh, isn't he, like, he's clever or he's funny. And it was, if I were somebody that wasn't as involved as I am and as engaged as I am in this, it would have struck me that they were smirking the whole time, like this was was something not to be taken seriously. And it didn't feel like America should take it seriously. I don't think this speech is gonna do anything for him and

I think it's very forgettable and will be forgotten very, very quickly.

I think it's interesting about Johnson and Vance. I don't put much I don't put much stock in kind of body language stuff or whatever but particularly those two Republican leaders have kind of resting smirk face like they both just kind of have that look which it's it's an accident that it's the two of them behind the panel but both of them kind of have the arms-folded smirk as a resting look.

And so particularly striking that they never got out of that pose for this whole speech tonight.

Eugene?

You know, I have been texting with some Republicans who are sitting in that room. And before the speech, I asked them, I said, what do you want the president to do? And they said, well, we want him to do what he's going to do is to help the American people understand why we should keep the gavel come November. And in no way, shape or form did he do that, right? And they said that.

They're very clear about that. They always say these things in text messages to us and they never say that in front of cameras, but that is what they said. And I think at the end of the day, this could have been a time in a different presidency where the president would stand up there and say, look, I know you guys aren't feeling what we've been doing. We're going to keep working on it. At the end of the day, we hear you. We're going to fight for you. And we are turning it around.

And that is not what you heard at all. Instead, you heard President Trump over and over and over again say mission accomplished. And the American people who are going to go to the grocery store tomorrow will know that the mission was not accomplished on the economy. They don't feel safer with ICE in their streets. And they don't feel safer with the president of the United States talking and fumbling around with what he might do with Iran. And these Republicans that are sitting in that space are thinking the same exact thing.

Just on the Iran thing, I think this is actually important. You know, we have not put this many h into that region since Ir if you go back and you lo a multi month campaign, r the war, like attempts at and intimidation, all tho

two paragraphs on it toni I mean, we have like ent. It's possible that if things go awry we're gonna start a war with Iran. And to the extent that he articulated a justification for what we're doing there, it was as much about our concerns about the Iranian government's mistreatment of their own people than it was about the nuclear program or any other thing. I mean it was a mention of the nuclear program,

a mention of sponsors of terrorism, and then just as much, if not more, about how much they are mistreating their own people, as if that's Donald Trump's reasoning for how he approaches the rest of the world. It was really, to me, it seemed strange.

And also, yes, internally incoherent and inconsistent. I mean, particularly in the same speech in which he said, like, our great new partner, Venezuela, they've given us 80 million dollars of war. I was like, wait a second, it's the same government. It just has a different guy.

Now they're our great new partner?

He called out Delce Rodriguez, too, who is essentially Maduro's handpicked person.

And remember, I mean, that was the last military action. explain it all and now he's like blown just right through it. Yeah but it's like I remember at a certain point in my life I was doing tutoring with kids in high school and talking about like persuasive writing and and we would start with like I would be like well who's your favorite like musician right and then you'd say like well just convince me that's the case because everyone knows how to argue and persuade when they're not like looking at a blank page. Well I like them because he didn't do that. He never does it with anything, but, like, we're going to start a war with a country.

There was nothing — there was no attempt to make an argument for why that might be necessary or in the national interest or anything. Yeah.

There isn't one.

There's none.

And also, they don't feel like they have to, right? This administration does not believe that they have to explain to the American people if they're sending boots on the ground, why carrier groups or wherever they are, they don't care. And when you talk to folks within the administration, what they will tell you is that they're fine with that. They don't think that Congress, they know Congress isn't going to do anything. They don't think the American people on anything that they put in front of them.

Or he doesn't have to bother. I mean, the common theme between all the things he likes to do, right, give speeches, right, impose tariffs, build, knock down the White House and build things and build himself things, these, the wars and the way that he's approaching them,

the common theme and the way he approaches all of these things is that he just gets to do them. That there is no other countervailing force that he needs to engage with.

It's the power, not the policy.

It's the power. There's no reason to get the consent of the government, because who cares about the government? Everything he wants to do is only about stuff that he can do on his own. And Lawrence, I was wondering what you thought about the fact that there was no mention of the ballroom. I had expected, I mean, I don't think, but I thought he might pull out like a white chocolate version of the ballroom, you know, the model, or the great arch, you know, the great arch, or say what he's doing with Lafayette Park or show

us about the gold Gugas he's put up all over the Oval Office, and the Trump Kennedy Center, or the Trump Institute of Peace. I mean, all of this stuff that, the Trump Dulles Airport, all the different things that he wants named for himself, that he's bulldozing, that he's demolishing the banners

with his face on them all over Washington. No mention of any of those things.

You know, there must have been an intervention to stop them from talking about the ballroom. You know, the whole family was there, the whole White House

staff.

They must have spent the day getting them to not talk about the ballroom, because you know the Democrats wanted them to.

Yes.

Please talk about your ballroom, the thing that you care about more than anything else that the American people care about. You know, when I see a Trump speech in this setting, I always worry about the people, those high school kids who are watching their first State of the Union address tonight.

There are foreign students in our colleges who are freshmen this year who have arrived in this country for the first time. They're watching their first State of the Union address. They should know that the president does not say to half of the room, these people are crazy. Those were his exact words.

These people are crazy, pointing to the Democrats. That's never happened before. No other president would do that. He also said, Democrats are destroying our country. No Republican president has ever said that, and no Democratic president has ever said, Republicans are destroying our president has ever said Republicans are destroying our country,

ever. And I just want the high school kids who are watching this for the first time to know that doesn't happen.

But they're up too late.

But just imagine, just imagine if any Democrat ever said it. By the way, if the next Democratic president in that setting says Republicans are destroying our country, that president will be condemned the next day by the New York Times and every editorial board in the country.

This will be ignored. There will be no massive outraged editorials tomorrow about Donald Trump saying Democrats are destroying our country. And I just want first-time viewers of this to know, this is not the way it ever was. And I just want first-time viewers of this to know, this is not the way it ever was.

When it goes down in history, we hereby declare there shall be asterisks on all Donald Trump's