RICHMOND, Va. — President Donald Trump delivered a nearly two-hour State of the Union address Tuesday, highlighting his administration’s policies on tariffs, immigration and foreign affairs while pausing to award medals to several guests in attendance.
CBS 6 political analyst Dr. Bob Holsworth offered his perspective, touching on Democratic absences from the House chamber, the president's messaging, and Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger's response on behalf of the Democratic Party.
Roughly half of Democratic elected officials were not in attendance during the address. Holsworth said the absences reflected a deliberate choice by some members of the party.
"A lot of them just said, 'We think he's going to tell a pack of lies here. He's going to say things that we don't even want to hear. So we don't even want to grace the chamber with our presence,'" Holsworth said.
Holsworth said those who did attend may have played into the president's hands.
"You had this back and forth, and it's easier for him when he's controlling the podium, and you have somebody from the audience on the Democratic side yelling at him — he looks a lot better typically," Holsworth said.
On the substance of the speech, Holsworth said the president had two primary goals.
"He really had two purposes tonight. I think the first was to try to claim that the economy is much better than some of these public opinion polls were saying the people think," Holsworth said. "That's a tough road to hoe in some ways. If people don't think they're doing very well and you're telling them they're doing better than they think, a lot of people don't take that too seriously."
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He said the second goal was to draw a sharp contrast with Democrats.
"The second part of it was to really criticize Democrats and to say, 'Even if you don't like the Republicans, even if you don't like me, they're deranged. They're crazy' — he called them at times — 'They're going out and they're changing the gender of their kids without even telling the parents. They're deranged and you really don't want to support them.' And I think that's the kind of argument that he's pretty comfortable making," Holsworth said.
Holsworth also weighed in on Spanberger's Democratic response, calling it effective despite the difficult circumstances.
"I thought Spanberger once again really did an excellent job in a very thankless position in some ways. You get 10 minutes after the president's been on for almost 2 hours," Holsworth said.
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He said Spanberger's tone stood in direct contrast to the president's.
"While he was calling the Democrats crazy and deranged, she got up there and she gave a very focused, very professional, very succinct criticism of the Trump administration and basically said, 'You can trust the Democrats. Look at me. Look at what I'm trying to do, trying to make things more affordable. I'm not going to be supporting that kind of immigration policy that's actually sending these untrained ICE officers out on the street, and certainly I'm not going to be doing the kind of policies that benefit, sort of, my buddy billionaires' that she claimed that the president is doing," Holsworth said.
Holsworth said Spanberger served as an effective contrast for her party.
"She was just sort of an excellent contrast for the Democrats in particular, given the kind of message that Donald Trump was sending about them a half hour earlier," Holsworth said.
He added that Spanberger rose to the occasion.
"I think she was up to the moment," Holsworth said.
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