State of the Union speeches haven’t mattered in a while. Even in their heyday, they were only bringing in 60-plus million viewers, and that’s been declining substantially for decades. They rarely result in a post-speech bump for any president, and according to Gallup polling data since 1978, the average change in a president’s approval rating has been less than one percentage point in either direction.
To be sure, this is good news for President Trump. He should hope and pray this State of the Union was lightly watched.
His speech was a chaotic cacophony of lies, bigotry, gaslighting, and willful ignorance, painting the portrait of a man who has lost the country, and he knows it.
If Trump is confident about the state of the union, the health of the Republican Party, and keeping the majority come November, his unhinged and delusional address belied that confidence. Instead, his cartoonish overcompensating for a disastrous first year only drove home the point that his administration is spiraling out of control and has no plans to change course.
Sounding very much like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris — who, I’ll remind you, lost all seven swing states in 2024 — Trump bragged about a country and economy that most Americans don’t recognize.
“Our nation is back: bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,” he declared. “This is the golden age of America.”
Few Americans feel that way, however. Polls show Trump’s job approval is at an all-time low. Most Americans think Trump is moving the country in the wrong direction, and a plurality believes Trump is doing a worse job than Biden. Most think he’s focused on issues that aren’t very important to them, and a majority say they are very concerned about the cost of health care, food, consumer goods, and housing. Less than a third of Americans believe the economy will be better in a year.
This anxiety over the economy and health of the country could not match Trump’s bombastic gloating any less. Americans are worried and frustrated, and are in no mood for Trump’s delusional victory laps.
He didn’t fare much better on immigration, another one of Trump’s signature issues. In April of 2025, 48% of Americans approved of Trump’s handling of immigration. In the months following, which saw ICE surges in major cities, ugly confrontations with citizens, the unlawful detainment of several illegal immigrants, and the shocking deaths of two protesters, his approval has dipped to a low of 41%, with his disapproval skyrocketing to 55%.
There was no acknowledgment of this or attempt at a course-correction in his speech, though. Instead, he played to the cheapest of seats with gory tales of violence by illegal drug lords, murderers and rapists — criminals no one has an issue with removing.
Finally, on tariffs, Trump told voters the sky was green. “Everything was working well,” before the Supreme Court shot them down, he insisted, and said that “factories, jobs, investment and trillions and trillions of dollars will continue pouring into America” because of those tariffs.
But according to independent estimates, his tariffs have cost U.S. households as much as $2,600 per year and polls show a majority of Americans oppose them.
Now, if he doesn’t want to listen to voters, that’s certainly his prerogative and I imagine Democrats won’t get in his way. Republican lawmakers who are up in November, though, probably wish he’d start sounding different when he talked about the economic pain most Americans were feeling.
But they’d need a different president, one who isn’t delusional and totally unwilling to admit what most people can see and feel: the state of the union is bad, and Trump is to blame.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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