This week on listening to America with Clay Jenkinson, State of the Union messages. Frequent guest host, David Horton, welcomes the third president of the United States Thomas Jefferson to the podcast to talk about political theater and state of the union appearances. Although Jefferson was a master of political theater, he chose not to take his annual State of the Union

messages in person to Congress. Instead, he sent his messages by courier and assumed that Congress

would study them at their convenience. After Mr. Jefferson makes his views clear in the first

segment of the podcast, I break character to talk about the uses and abuses of modern state of the

union appearances. Donald Trump's recent of modern state of the union appearances.

Donald Trump's recent 2026 state of the union message was much more like a reality television

show than anything in previous administrations, including a sustained celebration of the

U.S. Olympic hockey team. All of that and more on this week's Listening to America. Good day and welcome to Listening to America.

I'm David Horton, I'm your co-host.

Coming to you from Radford, Virginia, and joining me virtually is my very good friend, Clay Jenkinson. Clay, how are you? It's good to see you, my friend. You know, people have said they really enjoy when you host, and so I'm glad you're going to be doing more of it. It's good to see you there across the... It's amazing what Zoom has done for us. The first time I met you,

you invited me to come to Radford University. You made a lot of promises you didn't keep,

but that's all right. I'm not bitter. Then we've had a couple more of those personal encounters,

and then Zoom came along, and now we can talk anytime we want. Promises I didn't keep yet.

I'm not young anymore, man. I never gave you a deadline. Things are always

sweeter when you wait. I do appreciate our ability to get together really across the continent

and be able to talk a little bit. Today I'm thrilled that we're able to get together and talk just a

little bit because we just had the president's state of the union speech last night and taking a look at political theater.

And one of the questions that crossed my mind was, is this an essential part of the American experience?

Or is this just a distraction, a political opportunity, something to feed the mill in the middle of the wintertime when there may not be as much else to kind of get things rolling?

It's an interesting piece.

And I'd really like to begin, if we can, talking a little bit about where this exists, why it exists, the constitutional

language that's part of it, and then maybe even having a conversation with Mr. Jefferson

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