Rambling Man: Trump’s State of the Union
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.7 • 6.4K Ratings
🗓️ 25 February 2026
⏱️ 39 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
“The deliberate cruelty that they found humor in stood out to me,” says Jordan Uhl of Donald Trump’s Tuesday evening State of the Union. This week on the Intercept Briefing, co-hosts Uhl, Akela Lacy, and Jessica Washington disentangle Trump’s nearly two-hour-long speech so you don’t have to.
“This is who these people are. In some ways, they're trying to sugarcoat what they're doing, but in other ways they're so blatant about doing really evil things around the world and being totally OK with it,” says Lacy, in reference to Trump talking about kidnapping Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. “It is really alarming to me how good they are at framing that in a positive light. And there were people cheering all over the room for us toppling a regime, doing regime change, while they're telling you that we don't do that anymore.”
Washington adds, “The whole thing, if you read it, if you listen to it, it reads like a white nationalist speech.”
The co-hosts also dissect the Democratic Party's official response to the State of the Union, delivered by Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I don't know what's happening. |
| 0:02.8 | Somebody kicked in the door and shot my girlfriend. |
| 0:06.0 | Louisville police shot and killed 26-year-old Brianna Taylor in her apartment during what her family calls a botched drug raid. |
| 0:13.6 | Before Brianna Taylor, there was Catherine Johnston. |
| 0:16.1 | Atlanta police officers shot and killed 92-year-old Catherine Johnston. |
| 0:19.9 | And Donald Scott. |
| 0:22.8 | Donald Scott died in his living room. |
| 0:27.7 | It all began as a metaphor to demonstrate the country's commitment to defeating drug addiction. |
| 0:31.9 | America's public enemy number one is drug abuse. |
| 0:39.6 | But the war on drugs metaphor quickly became all too literal, complete with helicopters, military vehicles designed for abuse on a battlefield, and the suspension of basic civil liberties protections. |
| 0:43.8 | And the judge were just signed a no-knock-one. |
| 0:46.3 | They were kicking people's doors and violating people's rights. |
| 0:49.3 | The goal was to eliminate the enemy, and the people were the enemy. |
| 0:55.7 | This is collateral damage. |
| 0:57.6 | Subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts. |
| 1:04.8 | Welcome to The Intercept Briefing. |
| 1:07.1 | I'm Jordan Yule, Intercept contributor and co-host of this podcast, joined by my co-hosts. |
| 1:13.5 | I'm Akela Lacey, senior politics reporter at The Intercept. |
| 1:16.4 | And I'm Jessica Washington, politics reporter at The Intercept. |
| 1:19.9 | Akela, Jessica, it is late. |
| 1:22.4 | We just sat through, endured, rather, nearly two hours of Donald Trump's State of the Union and the |
| 1:31.0 | multiple responses will get into some of what will surely be the main takeaways from this speech. |
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