This Trump Speech Was the Ultimate Loyalty Test

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 5 March 2025

⏱️ 49 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The economy has started blinking red. President Trump’s tariffs have been roiling markets. Consumer sentiment was already down. G.D.P. forecasts are predicting slower growth. And on Tuesday night Trump declared to Congress and the nation that things had never been better. Something was different about this speech. The level of baldfaced lying. The way Republicans cheered along. How uncomfortable and uncertain Democrats seemed. It was as if, watching it all, you could feel something rupturing. My editor, Aaron Retica, joins me to talk through Trump’s fifth address to Congress. This episode contains strong language. Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by our supervising editor, Claire Gordon. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Isaac Jones, with Aman Sahota. The show’s production team also includes Rollin Hu, Elias Isquith, Kristin Lin and Jack McCordick. Original music by Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times opinion, this is the Ezra Klein Show. So it is Wednesday morning, March 5th.
0:34.2	Last night, President Donald Trump gave his first address to a joint session of Congress in his second term.
0:41.8	You don't call the State of the Union when it is this early in a term, but that's more or less what it was.
0:47.4	And I thought it'd be good to just walk through some impressions of it with my revered editor, Aaron Redica.
0:53.5	Aaron, welcome to the show.
0:54.6	Thanks.
0:55.2	All right.
0:55.8	Yeah, let's plunge right into it.
0:58.3	What did you make of the spectacle?
0:59.7	What did you make of the speech?
1:01.5	What were they trying to do?
1:02.8	What was he trying to do?
1:03.8	What was happening there?
1:05.4	I felt that the first 15 minutes of the speech were different than what came after and in an alarming way.
1:15.3	Okay.
1:15.9	I don't quite know how to describe this, but I felt like you could feel something rupturing.
1:21.3	And I think I described it as you could feel the rules, the norms, you could feel that we had broken American politics already,
1:31.0	and there was now nothing really governing action. And so I'd say that in a couple of different
1:36.1	ways. One way had to do with Donald Trump and the Republicans. We will talk about the level of
1:41.8	lying, Trump did in that speech, the genuinely bald-faced lying.
1:46.4	The way that speech came on the day when markets were in chaos.
1:50.4	America's momentum is back. Our spirit is back. Our pride is back. Our confidence is back.
	...

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