Opinion | ‘It Was 90-Plus Minutes of Bad Moments’: 9 Opinion Writers on Trump’s Address to Congress
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Guest Essay
‘It Was 90-Plus Minutes of Bad Moments’: 9 Opinion Writers on Trump’s Address to Congress
March 5, 2025
Credit… Illustration by Shoshana Schultz/The New York Times By New York Times Opinion
President Trump addressed a joint session of Congress Tuesday night, casting himself as the leader of a revolution that had already restored free speech, saved American automakers from destruction and ushered in “the greatest and most successful era in the history of our country.” It was “a time for big dreams and bold action,” he told Congress. Soon, he said, he’d balance the budget, end the war in Ukraine and bring back “true democracy.” Here’s what our writers thought of his speech.
Best Moment Binyamin Appelbaum Representative Al Green’s stand in defiance of a president who has governed in defiance of the law. Green’s civil disobedience was the behavior of a man who believes that Trump is a threat to American democracy. Why did he stand alone?
Josh Barro Trump boasted of the sharp drop in migrant encounters at the southern border and mocked President Joe Biden’s insistence that better enforcement would require new laws, declaring, “It turned out that all we really needed was a new president.” An effective line on his strongest issue.
Frank Bruni Trump is on solid political ground — and in his comfort zone — when he talks about cracking down on illegal immigration. Among many lies, he truthfully said that fewer migrants were unlawfully crossing the border: “They heard my words, and they chose not to come.” Hard to dispute that.
Michelle Cottle When Trump had the director of the Secret Service make a 13-year-old boy diagnosed with brain cancer an honorary agent. It was a heartwarming plug for the president’s Make America Healthy Again agenda — and a clever way to gloss over the problematic views of his health and human services chief.
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