President Donald Trump has chosen the battlefield on which Republicans will fight Democrats for control of Congress in November’s midterm elections. The terrain he marked out in his State of the Union address is patriotism.
The penumbra of patriotism includes America First, identification with the United States’s traditional people and culture, devotion to this nation and the very principle of the nation-state, and a rejection of multiculturalism.
Trump did this with a stark statement to Congress and a demand that members show whether they agreed or not. “If you agree with this statement, then stand up and show your support: The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.” Every Republican stood, and all Democrats remained seated.
It was a Trumpian trap, associating government “of the people, by the people, for the people” with preventing illegal immigration and deporting foreigners who have no right to be here. Democrats blundered into it.
It is a moral imperative that American citizens have the sole right to decide which aliens may live with them as neighbors. If you believe in democracy and the nation-state, you must accept this principle.
Democrats hate Trump’s secure border and his deportations, so they sat on their hands, glaring at him or avoiding his gaze as he told them they should be ashamed. They looked awful. Republicans are already airing political ads featuring the leftists’ 90-second rejection of the idea that the federal government should stand for Americans, not for foreigners who arrogantly seize the right to live and work here.
Patriotism, a belief in America’s past greatness and the possibility of its future greatness, has defined Trump and his supporters’ motivations since he entered politics by coming down a golden escalator in 2015.
But that moral urge has grown since Trump’s return to the Oval Office, and its salience has grown recently. The public watched and noticed as U.S. Olympic athletes either deprecated America or spoke proudly of their country.
Patriotism detonated in hearts nationwide when the USA hockey teams won gold. The men’s team members seemed additionally to represent traditional, rugged but tender American manhood when they took the tiny children of Johnny Gaudreau, a star teammate killed in a road accident in 2024, and cradled them in their arms during celebrations at center ice.
Trump brought the team triumphantly into the House of Representatives gallery wearing their medals on Tuesday as part of a stream of sporting, civilian, and military heroes with whom he turned the even into an America First TV spectacular. It was exploitative, deeply populist, and effective.
A CNN poll found that nearly two-thirds of viewers approved of Trump’s speech. That’s because the nation yearns, as ordinary people everywhere yearn, to be proud of the country to which they belong and to have leaders who represent them by wanting the same thing.
A SNOWBALL’S CHANCE OF DECENCY IN NEW YORK
Trump presented Americans with a clear choice: Vote for Republicans and you’ll have leaders who are on your side and on America’s side, or vote for Democrats and be governed by people who don’t know their allegiance shouldn’t be to illegal immigrants.
But while the impact of the speech was profoundly positive for Republicans, it’s a long way until November. The momentum of State of the Union addresses tends to fade. Republicans’ big challenge now is to sustain it.