He is quite correct. The show of the State of the Union Speech, based on the reporting, would have been more proper for Baathist Iran, North Korea, or Nazi Germany. It wasn't a real State of the Union Address.
There hasn't been one for some time.
Television destroyed what was once a serious endeavor. If you look at old State of the Union addresses, particularly when they were still written, they were serious matters. Now they have all the dignity of a pole dancer performing at a strip club, and they're getting worse.
Any honest State of the Union delivered since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic would have to start off with "the State of the Union is grave" or words to that effect. An honest one now would have to start off with "the State of the Union is gravely imperiled" and go on from there. The United States is in really bad shape, not all due to Donald Trump, but with everything about Donald Trump making the nation's condition much, much, worse.
The nation is hugely polarized. About 40% of the nation have fallen under the spell of an unintelligent but effective salesman. Hatreds long thought in the past have revived in an aggressive form. Congress has completely failed to perform its job, something it started to do at least as far back as the 1980s. An attack on education and science that began under the Ronald Reagan administration has produced a drove of ignorant ill informed voters. Ignoring a growing immigration crisis that started in the 1970s fueled massive Rust Belt discontent. Over funding an all volunteer military has resulted in the creation of a post Cold War military class that's become an a danger to the nation itself. Ignoring global warming is imperiling the entire plant while lining the pocked of an oligarch class that's rapidly depriving the same Rust Belt class that's now supporting it of any middle class way of making a living. Ignoring science has also lead to a complete inability to understand basic human biological facts.
This country is an utter disaster, and it's lead right now by a stupid man whose intellect is crashing into dementia.
Trump is a mentally ill man to start with. Raised in a family that managed to avoid serving in times of war and whose wealth was started off by a German immigrant (ironically) who engaged in the sex trade, he's always been a self centered man focused on greed and engaging in lust. In his dementia, he cannot see the world in any manner other than acquisition, and believes his own propaganda about his having a unique understanding of the "art of the deal". He's the laughing stock of the globe, and at a some point fairly soon in the United States, he'll be regarded as the worst president in the nation's history and the worst human being to ever occupy the Oval Office. If there's anything redeeming to Trump's reign at all it will be that his profoundly bad occupation of that office has demonstrated how severely various reforms to the Constitution are needed.
Be that as it may, the nation is not going to emerge from Trump the nation it was. It will be a second rate nation, and that will be due to him, and those who served him. The US will crawl back to the family of Western nations, but it will just be one of them, not the leader of them. That's now fallen to the European Union.
When that occurs the millions who followed Trump will deny it, including some of those working for him now . Vance and Rubio will be two who will assert that they were never Trumpites.
On that, we digress. State of the Union addresses were once written and they were much better when they were. Those days should return. They were not intended to be an perverted administration's stripping performance while lustful inebriated fans cheered the stripper, which is what they now are. Today's state of the union addresses are embarrassing in the extreme and not something a mature dignified nation would do, but then, right now, we are not a mature dignified nation.
State of the Union addresses should go back to being written. If they are delivered orally, they should be given during the work day as they should reflect serious work. And, frankly, there should be a mechanism, and a severe one at that, that if they are dishonest, there should be an immediate impact. For example, although now it would have no legal impact, immediately after any oral State of the Union address there should be a vote of confidence. If a simple majority votes note, the authority of the President should be suspended until he can come back in front of Congress and the nation and not act like a buffoon.
That would require, of course, a serious Congress as well, which we also lack.
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