Good morning! Welcome. Glad you’re here. Today is Friday, Feb 27, 2026. It’s National Strawberry Day, National Polar Bear Day, and National Pokémon Day, or so says Alexa.
Today In History:
1860: Abraham Lincoln makes a speech at Cooper Union in the city of New York that is largely responsible for his election to the Presidency.
1933: Nazi Germany’s parliament building, the Reichstag, is destroyed by fire.
1942: Radio emissions from the Sun first detected by English physicist and radio astronomer James Stanley Hey, working on WWII radar anti-jamming methods.
1969: General Hafez al-Assad becomes head of Syria via military coup.
1977: Swedish pop group ABBA arrives in Australia for the first time, sparking “ABBA-mania.”
1996: Pokémon first appears in the role-playing video game “Pocket Monsters Red and Green” for Game Boy in Japan.
Birthdays today include: poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow; Charles Strite, who invented the Pop-Up toaster; Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black; historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr.; NBC and RCA’s David Sarnoff; cultural anthropologist Ralph Linton; singer Marion Anderson; Charles Best, who discovered insulin; author John Steinbeck; actresses Joanne Woodward and Elizabeth Taylor; activist Ralph Nader; actor Howard Hessman; RNC Chair Lee Atwater; rockers Neal Schon and Johnny Van Zant; and singer Josh Groban.
* * *
It’s now been a few days since the State of the Union address.
To say the least, there is a lot there to analyze, and it will be a fair effort to cast it all into a cohesive commentary. You see, it’s been my experience that the reactions to each SOTU speech, both before and after it, are just as interesting and indicative of our immediate political future as the speech itself is. This year’s event certainly proved that much.
So, let’s take before-the-speech first. From NotTheBee:
On Monday, college kids told us Trump didn’t do so well at the State of the Union.
The only problem…it hasn’t happened yet. pic.twitter.com/w6eo8evNo2
— Brecca Stoll (@breccastoll) February 24, 2026
Amazing, but not unexpected. A knee-jerk reaction, with zero situational awareness. Still, not bad for a group of people who, just a couple of years ago, were fired for leaving their jobs to chase Pokémon. Now the frightening part, the real Ex-Lax moment: These people vote.
One more historical point: Let’s compare:
Wait a minute… pic.twitter.com/tZIykIg9LS
— AG 🔥 (@Yolo304741) February 26, 2026
Now, let’s move along to the evening itself, wherein we find that the only thing that’s gotten worse in Trump’s second term is the Democrats’ behavior. I expected it, and so was not surprised at all by this. As the New York Post describes it:
“One of the great things about the State of the Union is how it gives Americans the chance to see clearly what their representatives really believe,” Trump said during his Tuesday night remarks in the House chamber. “So tonight, I’m inviting every legislator to join with my administration in reaffirming a fundamental principle. 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.”
Duly cued, Republicans led by Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) rose to their feet while scores of Democrats remained firmly seated.
[…]
Later in his speech, Trump ripped Democrats again for not standing up after he recognized the mother of murdered Ukrainian refugee Iryna Zarutska.
[…]
“She had escaped a brutal war only to be slain by a hardened criminal, set free to kill in America. Mrs. Zarutska, tonight I promise you that we will ensure justice for your magnificent daughter, Iryna.”
After the applause died down, a visibly perplexed Trump asked of Democrats: “How do you not stand? How do you not stand?”
[…]
Trump also tried to woo voters ahead of the November midterms by highlighting his efforts to lower prescription drug costs, and ripped the Democrats for their support for youth gender reassignment surgery.
“Surely we can all agree no state can be allowed to rip children from their parents’ arms and transition them to a new gender against the parents’ will,” Trump said.
But of course, they failed in this as well; again, the Democrats sat silent and stone-faced.
With their failure to be aligned with even the basic tenets of human decency, showing no compassion toward the grieving mother or the widow of Charlie Kirk and no pride at the parade of genuine American heroes — all things that should be non-controversial for any American — the Democrats essentially wrote the scripts for the GOP’s midterm political ads. If the GOP is smart, they’ll be pounding those images from now until November.
And here’s the thing: The Democrats’ stone-faced inaction, that lack of support for what should be totally non-controversial things that all Americans should be behind, was planned. That’s right: They planned this inaction, this lack of support for all these points. How do I know? Let’s let Veep JD Vance speak to this:
The obvious indication here is that Democrats circulated a pre-speech message. Keep your seats. Show no support for anything Trump says. They’ve even gone so far as to be critical of the U.S. Men’s Hockey team for their appearance at the speech, as PJ’s Rick Moran points out, along with Steve Kruiser.
In the doing, the Democrats came right out and told us who they are, and who they are not. Clearly, they do not agree that their first and most important job as members of the House and the Senate is to support American Citizens, despite the acknowledgement of that in the oaths they took when they assumed office. They showed us that despite their calls for compassion, they themselves have none. They told us by their actions that they do not support American citizens, nor do they hold American citizens as a higher priority than foreign nationals. Thereby, they showed us all that, even absent the corruption we’ve witnessed from these same people, they most certainly do not deserve the seats they hold.
I suggest we believe them, in what they told us from the House floor that night, and react accordingly.
Related: SOTU: Everyone Acted Exactly As Expected
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