Rosy Predictions, Angry Attacks: Trump’s State of the Union

The Daily

The New York Times

News, Daily News

4.3 • 107.6K Ratings

🗓️ 25 February 2026

⏱️ 37 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In his first State of the Union address of his second term, President Trump offered a rosy portrait of a United States that has lost confidence in his leadership. He also relentlessly baited Democrats, who want to win back control of Congress in the midterms this fall. David E. Sanger, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, takes us inside the room.

Transcript

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0:00.0	From New York Times, I'm Michael O'Bowarrow. This is The Daily.
0:07.7	Today, in President Trump's first State of the Union of his second term, he offered a rosy portrait of a country that has lost confidence in his leadership and relentlessly baited Democrats
0:23.2	as they try to win back control of Congress this fall.
0:30.1	My colleague, Chief Washington correspondent David Sanger,
0:35.1	takes us inside the room.
0:40.7	It's Wednesday, February 25th.
0:49.7	David, good evening.
0:52.5	Hey, Michael. We're back again.
0:54.9	We're back again. This is your second episode, I think, in two days.
0:58.8	It's about 11.30 p.m. on Tuesday night, and the president just wrapped his State of the Union address.
1:07.9	And it was a very long State of the Union address.
1:11.6	Oh, yeah.
1:12.2	It was an hour and 47 minutes.
1:15.9	You know, for years, we thought that Bill Clinton set the record at 99 minutes.
1:21.5	Right.
1:21.7	And people couldn't believe how verbose he was.
1:25.9	But Donald Trump has shown consistently he can go longer.
1:31.9	And he did go longer. This was the longest by New York Times calculations, State of the Union in history.
1:38.7	Yep.
1:39.8	Well, David, as you know well, every state of the union, no matter its length, feels deeply grounded in the moment in which it is delivered.
1:47.1	And I want to start there with you with the stakes of this speech for President Trump as we went into this speech on Tuesday night.
1:56.5	Well, he had a lot to get done because a year ago, he was coming in fresh from a big electoral victory.
	...

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