Why I’m not watching the State of the Union – and you shouldn’t either | Robert Reich

I’m not going to watch the State of the Union address on Tuesday night. I urge you not to, either.

I hope Neilsen (or whoever makes such estimates these days) will find that far fewer Americans watched Donald Trump’s State of the Union than have watched any other State of the Union in recent memory. It will drive Trump crazy.

But there are plenty of reasons for not watching other than driving Trump crazy.

First, he doesn’t deserve our attention. He’s abused and defiled the American presidency, even worse than he did in his first term.

He’s blatantly usurped the powers of Congress. He has overtly used the justice department to seek to punish people he considers his enemies and pardon people loyal to him. He has willfully rejected the rule of law, broken treaties, literally destroyed part of the White House, thumbed his nose at our allies (including our closest and heretofore loyal neighbors), and utterly failed his constitutional duty to take care that the laws are faithfully executed.

He lies like most people breathe. He’s a fraud and a traitor.

Second, we already know what he’s going to say, because he’s already stated and restated his lies every chance he gets.

He says the economy is in wonderful shape, that he’s settled six (or eight?) wars, that the US has brought peace to the Middle East, that he’s made the country safer and more secure, that the 2020 election was stolen from him, ad nauseam.

He assumes that if he repeats these lies enough, some gullible people will believe him. Maybe so, but why should we give him more of an audience for his lies?

Third, he refuses to be president of the United States – instead, he behaves as though he’s just president of the people who voted for him in 2024. He talks in glowing terms about “my” people while denigrating “them” – those of us who didn’t vote for him, who still disapprove of him, or who refuse to give him whatever he wants. So far this year he’s cut more than $1.5bn in blue-state grants.

If he doesn’t believe he’s my president, why should I treat him as my president and watch his State of the Union?

Fourth and finally, I already know the real state of the union. It sucks.

The economy has been good for big business and wealthy Americans but shitty for small businesses and average working Americans.

Although Trump repeatedly promised that his tariffs would shrink the trade deficit and lead to a revival in US manufacturing, the opposite has happened. US imports hit a record high last year, as did the trade deficit in goods. And US manufacturers cut more than 80,000 jobs.

In the 2024 election, Trump also promised to bring down prices, but inflation is still steaming ahead. He’s so out of touch with what most Americans are enduring that he calls the crisis of affordability “a hoax”.

He promised to control immigration, but six out of 10 Americans think he’s gone “too far” by sending federal agents into American cities and causing mayhem and murder.

He promised to avoid foreign entanglements, but he abducted the president of Venezuela and the US has killed over 130 Venezuelans, and is now considering an attack on Iran.

His threat has created another inflation risk: the possibility that a key oil export route will be disrupted has caused the price of Brent crude to soar.

For all these reasons, I’m not going to watch Trump’s State of the Union. Nor should you.

Some Democrats are already planning to skip it, opting instead for a counter-programming event on the National Mall dubbed the “People’s State of the Union”. Good!

You might ask your senators and representatives in Congress to boycott it, too.

• Robert Reich, a former US secretary of labor, is a professor of public policy emeritus at the University of California, Berkeley. He is a Guardian US columnist and his newsletter is at robertreich.substack.com. His new book, Coming Up Short: A Memoir of My America, is out now