Hello, and welcome to the David Frum show. I'm David Frum, a staff writer at the Atlantic.

My guest this week will be Tim Miller, host of the Ballworks Daily podcast. My literary topic this week won't be a book.

It will be a discussion of the ritual and performance of the state of the union address.

And I will get to that after the interview with Tim Miller.

But first, some opening thoughts on the dramatic recent events.

There are so many that one can hardly begin to tally them all.

I record this podcast the day

before the president is to deliver the state of the union address. You will see it or hear it at the

earliest, the morning after the president gives the state of the union address. So you will know more

than I do about what happens. I have no idea, although I can make some guesses. I'm going to

guess there's going to be a lot of ranting and raving in the state of the union address about the

Supreme Court and the recent tariff decision. And one of the questions that should spring to mind

is why is the president so very, very upset the Supreme Court struck down the tariffs he's been announcing

over the past year. I mean, I get it. No one likes to lose. This is an important issue for him,

but it's not like he doesn't have recourse. He continues to hold a majority in both House and Senate.

The Supreme Court has said your tariff measures would be fine if they came from Congress.

You just can't do them alone.

Why not announce in the state of the union? I've drafted a tariff bill. I'm sending it to Congress tomorrow.

I look forward to you enacting it at your earliest convenience. There are enough Republicans, enough in this House and Senate, and there's some anti-trade Democrats, you might get a majority.

Why not just pass the bill and do it the legal way that the Supreme Court pointed out to him?

Why is he falling back instead on all these convoluted other schemes for using imaginary balance of

payments crises, which don't really exist anymore in a day of floating exchange rates,

...