Title: President Trump's Speech to Congress.

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Brian Lehrer: Hey. It's the Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone, and thank you for keeping it up on those sustaining memberships as we aim for 5,000 during this drive to help build a financial firewall against the multiple attacks on our funding that they've launched in Washington. We'll begin today with some observations on and fact checking of the Trump speech to Congress last night. Basically, a State of the Union address, but they don't call it that in a new president's first year.

As many others have noted, it was more like another campaign speech. I'll say it was very much an us versus them speech, a good guys and bad guys speech, atypical for a State of the Union address or something like it. For a country that voted nearly 50/50 in the election, how many Americans was he writing off as them? There was a little bit of news on Ukraine, we'll talk about that, on certain additional tariffs that could be coming next month, in addition to the ones that took effect yesterday that drove the Dow down 600 points.

There was an interesting response from clearly a rising star in the Democratic Party, Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, who won statewide even as Trump did in his race in Michigan. We'll hear her from that speech as well. She hit him hard on prices, authoritarianism, and turning his back on the idea of American exceptionalism, which is about this country as a model of democracy for the world.

There were some whoppers to fact check. Facebook may have stopped hiring fact checkers this year, but we haven't. Here's one of those whoppers that might even be setting the stage for cuts to Social Security. Trump spent a long time on a list of people too old to be alive anymore who he claimed the government is sending Social Security checks to. Maybe you saw that part of the speech, alleging a massive amount of fraud that the Social Security Administration itself and every expert who keeps track of Social Security has been debunking.

Donald Trump: 3.47 million people from ages 120 to 129. 3.9 million people from ages 130 to 139. 3.5 million people from ages 140 to 149. Money is being paid to many of them.

Brian Lehrer: Well, money is not being paid to many of them, those people who aren't alive anymore, according to Social Security's actual records, as widely reported. We'll start there with Susan Glasser, staff writer at The New Yorker. She writes the weekly column in The New Yorker on life in Washington, and is co Host of their Political Scene podcast. She is also co-author of the books, Kremlin Rising; The Man Who Ran Washington and The Divider, her bestseller about Trump's first term. You hear her on the station sometimes on The New Yorker Radio Hour.

Susan, always good of you to take some time from your real job to give our listeners some of your time and insights. Welcome back to WNYC.

Susan Glasser: Oh, thank you, Brian. It's great to be with you.

Brian Lehrer: Can we start with that list of ages which went on for a while? He made some piece of theater out of that section, trying to build resentment of the government, I guess, as he does. From everything I've read this morning, it was not grounded in reality at all in terms of who Czechs are actually going out to or any actual fraud of that type. Where did that even come from?

Susan Glasser: Not grounded in reality is a good description of the entire speech, Brian. I think that's why I called it Trump's golden age of bunk. On the Social Security thing, it's another outgrowth of his turning over a large swath of the federal government to the Elon Musk chainsaw. Musk and his band of 20-year-olds, this is like a shock, a first impression to them. They literally don't know what it is they're cutting.

They go into the government and they misread things, and they have used Musk's platform of X to promote an astonishing array of lies about the government. The list last night was one. Remember the $50 billion or million dollars' worth of condoms for Gaza that Musk was talking about? This is like that.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Here's just one sample fact check from ABC News on that particular thing. It says according to agency statistics, of the 67 million people who receive Social Security benefits, only 0.1% are over the age of 100. I've also read, and you were just, I guess, referring to this, that this originated with Elon Musk apparently misunderstanding Social Security's database once he got access to it without any knowledge of what he was actually looking at. It lists past and deceased recipients, as well as current and living ones.

The list does not mean checks are going out to all those people. Even if we call that an honest mistake on Musk's part to start with, I don't know, there was Trump repeating and boosting it onto the biggest possible stage. Why so doubt about Social Security, which he always says he promises to protect?

Susan Glasser: That is a great question. I think it's fair to wonder about the motives of any of this because it's not on the level, obviously, none of it. Certainly, if you look at what Donald Trump campaigned on versus what he's doing right now, you can see that what he campaigned when was not on the level. He certainly didn't tell the American people in advance that Elon Musk was going to be the most powerful man in the world, and empowered to literally, almost unilaterally slash hundreds of thousands of federal jobs, eliminate federal programs that are authorized and funded by Congress, et cetera. Et cetera.

I think the Social Security thing is really interesting because that is a red line in our politics that a faction of the Republican Party has danced closer and closer to. Right? Because there's no real way, if you are an absolute budget cutter, absolute antigovernment, absolute looking to balance the budget, you essentially can't do it without touching these entitlements. That's certainly a faction of the Republican Party. It's not yet clear where Trump himself stands, but it was a remarkable moment.

Brian Lehrer: Musk called it a Ponzi scheme just the other day. That again, I don't know if he was on script or off script with the actual president, but it certainly so's doubt and probably makes a lot of people who thought they've been promised safety in the Trump campaign for Social Security say, "Wait, where are they really going?" Here's another claim to fact check, also us versus them. Good guys and bad guys. The bad guys in this case are all of what we used to call our allies in Europe.

This one is about Ukraine, as we get into your Russia and foreign policy expertise, he claims here, falsely, according to multiple reports I saw this morning, that the US has been funding Ukraine in its defense against the Russian invasion more than Ukraine's European neighbors have.

Donald Trump: You said perhaps $350 billion is like taking candy from a baby. That's what happened. They've spent $100 billion.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, that's another example of something that many fact checkers corrected last night and this morning. I could read an example, or do you want to say anything about that?

Susan Glasser: Yes. No, I appreciate you calling that one out, Brian, because he said this $350 billion again and again, and again. It was the pretext for an early action of essentially mobster diplomacy, your money or your life. Telling Zelensky a few weeks ago, sign away the rights to $500 billion worth of your country's mineral wealth in order to pay us back for this $350 billion that we didn't spend. Now the negotiations over that mineral deal have evolved, so it's no longer quite the $500 billion stick up. B

That falsehood of the $350 billion in aid has persisted. Why? Because when the facts don't suit where Donald Trump wants to head, he just leans into his alternate reality, his alternate truth, as Kellyanne Conway would put it, and just keeps going there again and again, and again. That is a hallmark of Donald Trump and his followers who have chosen to follow him into the alternate reality, especially on Europe.

Remember, this goes back to his first term. It goes back to the very beginning of Trump in public life. He is not a supporter of the kind of pillar of alliances and especially the NATO alliance that underpins our national security since World War II. He's done so much to undermine it in the last couple weeks. He's essentially shown his hand and switched sides, you could say, in the geopolitical conflict between the West and democracies, and Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping, and autocracies. He's changed teams.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, changed teams. We played the clip the other day of Congressman Mike Quigley of Illinois, who's the co-chair of the bipartisan Ukraine Caucus in the House, saying flat out, he just said it. We played this line, "We're on the side of the bad guys now," referring to Putin.

Just on the particular fact check. Here's an example from the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania, just so the listeners have an example. It says, "Contrary to Trump's claims, Europe has provided more aid than the US. According to the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, which they cite a German research organization that tracks funding for Ukraine. The US has so far allocated about $121 billion compared with about $140 billion from Europe."

Then moving on. Listeners, if you're just joining us, we're talking about last night's speeches with Susan Glasser from The New Yorker. Then there were some what I'll call disconnects between words and deeds. One emotional moment was when he pointed out a 13-year-old in the gallery named DJ, whose dream is to grow up to be a police officer.

Donald Trump: In 2018, DJ was diagnosed with brain cancer. The doctors gave him five months at most to live. That was more than six years ago.

Brian Lehrer: Susan, there was a lot of reporting recently about cuts to pediatric cancer research. Hello. That the new administration or the Republican Congress was making or proposing. Was it a disconnect that he's spotlighting a kid with cancer and his doctors while the Republican budget is cutting or proposing to cut that specific funding stream?

Susan Glasser: Yes. I also had that immediate thought watching the moment, and it was moving to see the boy, but also a bit painful, to be honest, and a bit exploitative, as many of this kind of show and tell stories that have become trademark of these annual addresses to Congress have been since, I think it was Ronald Reagan who really pioneered the guest star, everyday American in the gallery kind of thing.

I found it to be a little bit classic example of Trump's brazenly ignoring what he's doing and then just saying what he wants to say. There were other examples of that that really got me. He goes on and on about how we've got to support law enforcement and go all in for law enforcement. The man who pardoned violent offenders who attacked police officers in the very place where he's giving the speech.

Brian Lehrer: Were convicted of that in courts of law.

Susan Glasser: I mean, it was really-- It's something, right? I mean, a guy who is himself a convicted felon going on and on about that. A guy who says in the speech, he also says, "Well, I have resurrected free speech in America." Literally hours earlier, Trump sent out a social media post saying basically that college students who protest in ways that I don't like will be banned, which is almost the opposite of free speech.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Getting back to Ukraine, tell me if you think this was newsworthy, after the debacle between Trump and Vance, and Zelenskyy at the White House last week.

Donald Trump: Earlier today, I received an important letter from President Zelensky of Ukraine. The letter reads, "Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer."

Brian Lehrer: Susan, with your expertise in this area of foreign policy, do you take that as them starting to patch that up on both sides, and head toward negotiation, if that's even the right word, that they may have been heading to before they smacked them down?

Susan Glasser: Yes, it's very interesting. I did think that was a conscious decision on the part of the administration and the White House to dial it back. Whether that's because politically they thought it's not playing well. Even many Republicans in America are on the side of Ukraine and they don't like the idea of America as the pro-Putin country. Right?

I mean, it doesn't even make sense to people, as Justin Trudeau pointed out, I think, in a very interesting juxtaposition earlier in the day when he was talking about the tariffs on Canada and that your America's attacking its ally, Canada, while at the same time sucking up to a murderous dictator, Putin. Clearly Trump didn't want that to be the message in his speech. However, it is nonetheless the direction of his policy.

I thought it was very interesting, Brian, to answer your question, that just on the eve of the speech, the Trump administration announced that it was immediately cutting off all further assistance to Ukraine, including military assistance, intelligence cooperation, which has been key to the Ukrainians being able to fight on these last three years. By the way, just this morning, I saw that Trump's CIA director, John Ratcliffe, has confirmed the cutoff in cooperation. Trump did not mention it in the speech, but this is a breathtaking act, by the way, once again flouting Congress.

It was Congress who appropriated this assistance. We'll see it litigated perhaps in the Supreme Court again. Donald Trump, according to the lawyers that you and I talk to, doesn't have the unilateral right to cancel military assistance that has been authorized and appropriated by the United States Congress. Yet nonetheless, that's what he's done this week toward Ukraine. His policy is a radical lurch toward Putin, but his speech was not.

Brian Lehrer: The Trump-Zelensky exchange and the whole context that you were just describing was also a centerpiece of the Democratic response from Michigan Senator, Elissa Slotkin. Here's a little part of that.

Senator Elissa Slotkin: That scene in the Oval Office wasn't just a bad episode of reality Tv. It summed up Trump's whole approach to the world. He believes in cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends like the Canadians in the teeth.

Brian Lehrer: There's that exact comparison, right?

Susan Glasser: Yes, that's right. Elissa Slotkin did not have an easy job. Many of those speeches, those responses flop really badly. There's also probably a pretty small audience at that point, very late in the evening, I think we haven't mentioned, but Donald Trump spoke so long, it was literally the record, the modern record for one of these speeches, close to 100 minutes.

Elissa Slotkin, she is a former CIA officer, worked in the Pentagon. National security has been her focus even as a member of Congress. She was a House member before just becoming an elected member of the Senate. I thought she offered a reality-based take. It's interesting. In the Trudeau press conference that I was mentioning earlier, he talked about this weird Trump tick of attacking America's allies and cheering for its adversaries.

He said they're talking about working positively with Russia, appeasing Putin, a lying, murderous dictator. Make that make sense. Of course, it doesn't make sense. I think even to many of Trump's voters, it doesn't make sense. That's why I think Senator Slotkin made that reference, because largely, she's meant to appeal to the swing voters, people who might have voted for Trump but also voted for her. That's where she did the address from a City in Michigan that went for Slotkin and for Trump.

She mostly talked about kitchen table economic issues. This thing about Putin, I mean, that's a foreign policy issue in its most reductionist, simple terms. Are Americans really wanting to be on the side of Vladimir Putin? I just, I don't buy it. I don't buy it. This is something where Trump is pulled the Republican Party perhaps along with him, but it's his policy, not necessarily theirs.

Brian Lehrer: Let's end with this, because you've written about how-- in one of your New Yorker article about two weeks ago, which was called the Putinization of America, and you wrote, "It's not just in foreign policy that Trump is turning Putin's way. This is maybe the biggest forest for the trees thing."

Susan, I think that we have to keep coming back to. We've been trying to do that here. Whatever the specific policies and policy debates might be, they're important, but the underlying push beneath so many of them is to break democracy as we know it and make himself in charge of everything. We have to keep pointing that out. You agree?

Susan Glasser: Yes, I really appreciate that reference, Brian. The foreign policy shift is jarring, but just as jarring is the idea of an American president deploying an array of Putin-like tactics to take over the government, silence critical voices, move to go after any institutional pillars of opposition or constraints to him. That is just an enormous shift. It's not something we've seen presidents of either party pursue in the way that Trump in his second term is doing.

By the way, that includes Trump in his first term. This is a much more radical version of Donald Trump going after many of the institutions of our democracy itself.

Brian Lehrer: Which is why we have our recurring series now, as well as coming back to the question, even in specific policy-oriented segments, is this what democracy looks like? Thanks, Susan. Susan Glasser from The New Yorker and their Political Scene podcast, thank you for coming on.

Susan Glasser: Great to be with you. Thank you, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we focused on the Trump speech in this segment. Later in the show, next hour, we'll do a separate segment, mostly about Elissa Slotkin and her Democratic response. Stay with us for now.

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