What’s the “Great Betrayal” in Trump’s SOTU Speech?

President Donald Trump delivers his State of the Union address at the Capitol on Tuesday. Samuel Corum/Sipa via AP Images

Trump’s State of the Union address this week was not a speech. It was a performance. He bellowed about his own supposed awesomeness, reveled in recounting bloody tales of heinous crimes, and expropriated for himself the glory of athletic champions and war heroes whose strength, grace, and sacrifice he could never emulate. In true demagogue style, he hollered brazen lies and hurled demonizing insults at his critics and opponents. He behaved like a fellow who believes the way to win a debate is to shout louder than the other guy. He spent not a moment attempting to persuade. He never tries to do that. He aims to rile, not reason. He’s a narcissistic pitchman, always has been, always will be, trading in gaslighting, hawking, and carnival barking.

By now, there’s been plenty of gum flapping about his terrible, horrible, no good, very bad and very long speech. But there’s one portion that hasn’t got the attention it deserves. In the final stretch—after viciously encouraging tribalistic political hatred and declaring he has ushered the nation into a “golden age” by bringing about the best economy ever—he pivoted to a patriotic paean to the United States: “Americans built this nation from 13 humble colonies into the pinnacle of human civilization and human freedom, the strongest, wealthiest, most powerful, most successful nation in all of history.” On The Daily, the New York Times podcast, host Michael Barbaro called this finale a “stab at unity.”

It wasn’t. Trump and his speechwriters meant it to sound like a stab at unity. But this section contained not-so-coded language that sent a different message.

Trump began this part by hailing the pioneers: “Americans ventured out across the daunting and dangerous continent. We carved through an unforgiving wilderness, settled a boundless frontier, and tamed the beautiful but very, very dangerous Wild West. From empty marshes and wide-open plains, we raised up the world’s greatest cities.”

What’s missing here is that the marshes and wide-open plains were not empty. Many had to be depopulated by genocide. But it’s standard to leave out that piece of America’s origin story, as with slavery. And then Trump moved on to cite a long list of true American accomplishments: defeating fascism in World War II, reaching outer space, developing the internet. That’s all fine. But next he said:

All of this and so much more is the enduring legacy, unmatched glory, of the hard-working patriots who built and defended this country and who still carry the hopes and freedoms on all of humanity’s backs. For years, they were forgotten, betrayed, and cast aside, but that great betrayal is over, and they will never be forgotten again.

What is this “great betrayal” of which Trump speaks?

Authoritarians and fascists have long made betrayal a centerpiece of their narratives. It’s a flexible concept easily applied to differing circumstances. Hitler rose to power advancing the conspiracy theory that Jews, socialists, and liberals had stabbed the German army in the back and caused the nation’s defeat in World War I. In his red-baiting fever, Sen. Joe McCarthy called the Democrats the party of “betrayal” and accused them of scheming with communists to demolish America. Trump has long lambasted Democrats, the media, his critics, and vaguely defined elites as “the enemy within.” On Tuesday night, he accused the Democrats of “destroying the nation.”

Trump’s deployment of this idea of betrayal in his State of the Union speech carried the stench of Stephen Miller. Was this a reference to modern-day criticism of the Founders who enslaved human beings? A shot at woke-ism? Or a more nefarious allusion to the Great Replacement Theory advanced by Tucker Carlson and other MAGA leaders that holds that nonwhite people are being brought to the United States to supplant white Americans, or what some on the right now refer to as “legacy” Americans?

When Trump name-checks “hard-working patriots who built and defended this country and who still carry the hopes and freedoms on all of humanity’s backs” and who have supposedly been kicked to the curb, whom does he have in mind? It’s not the enslaved laborers whose toil made plantation owners wealthy. Nor the Chinese laborers who built lines for the mighty railroads. Or Mexican laborers who collected the vegetables and fruits that fed the United States. Not the civil rights marchers. Who are these people—he put this in the present tense—who are still carrying the nation’s hopes and freedoms and who are being betrayed right now?

This rhetoric was reminiscent of a speech delivered last year by Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), a major figure in MAGA World, who praised “heritage” Americans—“the sons and daughters of the Christian pilgrims that poured out from Europe’s shores to baptize a new world in their ancient faith” and to forge “a homeland for themselves and their descendants.” He suggested that real Americans—the “descendants” of these white pioneers—have been betrayed: “Their true adversary did not live in the faraway sands of some foreign nation, but in the halls of their own government.” (You should check out the full article I wrote on Schmitt’s speech, headlined, “The Most Dangerous Man in the US Senate?”)  

Trump—or, that is, Miller—found a clever way to pay tribute to the greatness of America and sound patriotic and unifying, while sending a signal to extremists and racists who believe they have been betrayed in a diverse America: We see you; we’re with you. They tricked Barbaro. If you don’t listen carefully and are not attuned to the racist grievances of the far right, it’s easy to miss this. But the charge of betrayal rings loud and clear to the adherents and promulgators of racist conspiracy theories, other paranoid fantasies, and white nationalism.

And what is Trump telling them when he says the “great betrayal is over”? Maybe he’s referring to efforts to crush DEI. Or his war on signs and exhibits in national parks that explain the warts of American history. Or his administration’s joint crusades to forcibly remove people of color from the United States and to restrict voting to reduce the political power of Black and Latino Americans. Probably all of it. Ultimately, Trump is affirming the conspiracism and racism of the right.

Trump has no intention of unifying the nation. His strategy has constantly been to encourage and exploit chaos, conflict, and division. The true treachery at hand is his betrayal of the rule of law, constitutional principles, American values, and common decency, and his state of the disunion speech is a warning there’s more perfidy to come.

Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland.corn@gmail.com.

As I know you know, there’s so much outrageous crap that flies by each day that it’s hard to notice it all, let alone adequately process and respond. One such moment happened this month when Secretary of Defense Peter Hegseth prayed at the Pentagon with Doug Wilson, a Christian minister.

Wilson is not just a run-of-the-mill pastor. He’s a proponent of Christian theocracy—advocating that society, including the government, be run according to conservative biblical principles. Of course, he gets to say what those principles are. For him, they include only allowing practicing Christians to hold public office and awarding votes to households (not individuals), with the husband as the final arbiter. In Wilson’s church, wives submit to their husbands.

Last year, he opened a house of worship in Washington, DC; it’s one of 150 churches he says he has set up nationwide. And Hegseth has been his most prominent supporter. In August, the SecDef reposted a CNN report featuring Wilson espousing his extremism, and he added this ringing endorsement to the tweet: “All of Christ for All of Life.” Sounds like approval of Wilson’s Christian nationalism. In that segment, one of the pastors in Wilson’s church voiced his opposition to the 19th Amendment, explaining “the atomization that comes with our current system is not good for humans.” Huh? What sort of theological claptrap is that to rationalize misogyny?

Hegseth’s support for a man who advocates theocracy and supports stripping women of the right to vote ought to be a major controversy and, certainly, a disqualification for office. Yet…it’s just another day in Trumpland. But this episode does illustrate one of the most significant consequences of Trumpism that’s not sufficiently discussed: the normalization of extremism.

The judges came across a remark that Kash Patel made in 2023 that obviously doesn’t qualify for the contest. But since it caused them to smile, they wanted to share it. You’re probably aware that this past weekend, Patel was not overseeing the many crises that have burdened the FBI. Instead, the FBI director, a major ice hockey fan, flew on the FBI’s private jet to Italy for the Olympics to watch the American men’s hockey team win the gold medal match, and then he conspicuously joined the locker room celebration and was filmed shouting and chugging a beer.

Well, not so long ago, Patel excoriated an FBI director for using government resources for pleasure travel. Let’s roll the tape: “I’m just saying Chris Wray doesn’t need a government-funded G5 jet to go to vacations. Maybe we ground that plane. $15,000 every time it takes off. Just a thought.”

The one thing about Patel’s brazen hypocrisy is this: It’s not surprising.

On to this week’s nominees. The judges eschewed entries from Trump’s SOTU address. There were just too many possibilities. But House Speaker Mike Johnson made the cut for whining about Democratic no-shows at the speech. He groused, “I think it’s detestable that members would boycott the speech,” adding, “We’re all for America.”

You know what’s detestable? More than 1,500 Trump brown-shirts incited by Trump's lies showing up uninvited to the Capitol, beating up cops, ransacking the building, and trying to overturn an election—and Trump pardoning them.     

Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), who seems to spend more time trolling than legislating, pulled a real dunderhead move. He tweeted a photo of Mexican cartel thugs and commented, “Cartel hitmen wear masks. Leftists aren’t complaining.” The judges wonder what Lee thought he was proving. Why did he think this was a clever dig at leftists? Who on the left is pro-cartel?

Immediately, Democratic senators and others pounced on Lee, noting that he had unintentionally made a comparison between ICE and criminal miscreants.

Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), chided, “Oh dear Mike, I literally couldn’t make our argument better than you do. The bad guys wear masks. The good guys don’t.” And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer got in on the action: “Yes. Cartel hitmen wear masks. That’s why ICE shouldn’t.” Lee deleted his post without comment.

Does anyone still care about Ann Coulter? She was a pioneer in rabid right-wing hate-peddling back in the day, tea party before tea party, MAGA before MAGA. Now she’s just one of a fleet of conservative loudmouths.

Coulter apparently loved Trump’s demagogic rant at the SOTU, and, naturally, she found a way to embrace the speech that also served as an attack on immigrants. “The beautiful ending to Trump’s SOTU address,” she remarked, “reminds me why we can’t have a second-, third- or fourth-generation immigrant as president. Love for our country has to be in your genes.”

Coulter, who says her family traces back to Puritans who came to America in 1633, got what Trump was saying at the end (see above). But this remark was pure idiocy. Quickly a comment added to her X post noted that Trump was a second-generation immigrant.

Another president who would not meet Coulter’s definition of a “real” American is her much-beloved Ronald Reagan. His grandfather, of good Irish stock, was born in England. His grandmother was born in what is now Canada. For punditing before thinking, Coulter gets the crown this week.

We’re going to stretch the definition of “inspiration” this week to cite Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger for her delivery of the Democratic response to the State of the Union. Presenting the opposition’s reply to the SOTU is usually a thankless endeavor that ends with irrelevance or failure. After a long speech, no one wants to listen to another politician, and it’s hard to follow a much-hyped event awash in pomp and spectacle. Then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) choked when he reached for a water bottle in the middle of his response in 2013. Eleven years later, Sen. Katie Britt delivered an odd blend of darkness and perkiness that drew poor reviews. Even Bill Clinton fouled it up when handed this opportunity in 1985, while he was governor of Arkansas.

Spanberger did not follow in this tradition. She may have delivered the best SOTU response in...ever. Speaking before a small audience in Williamsburg, Virginia, she nailed the major points: affordability, ICE abuses, Trump corruption, the Epstein case. Most of all, after nearly two hours of Trump’s Mad King act, she was refreshingly normal. I don’t think her speech will make a difference in how any voter will vote. But she provided Democrats a good template for both assailing Trump and presenting a more compelling set of values and policies. If not inspiring, it was encouraging to see a Democrat hit the mark. This was a much-needed palate cleanser.

Whenever I write about the Democrats and what they ought to do, it turns out readers have lots of thoughts on the matter. This time around, I reported on data that backs up my hunch that the fight in the party should not be left-versus-center but muscle-versus-moderation.

Michael Wolk wrote:

Your gut feelings, borne out by the research you cite, seem to make sense. We are not as a whole high-knowledge political junkies here in the good ol’ US of A. We live in a reality-TV, AI-influenced, sound-bitten world, but with true affordability issues that most people experience on some level, even if they don’t understand the causes. Who actually does? The American dream, however unequal it was, delivered for many decades. I bought my first house in 1973 in Sudbury, Massachusetts, which cost a whopping $43,000, and that was a lot of money back then. My folks gifted us $5,000 for the down payment. Today I suspect you’d have to add at least half a million (more?) to that number. Hopefully even the “low information” voters see that the oligarchs have essentially taken over the country, buying elections, controlling the economy, owning the news outlets, killing the American dream for most of the younger generation.

Hopefully come November we see a huge backlash, but the Dems need to really clean house! The Schumers and old guard need to retire for the most part. They’ve been the beneficiaries of the corrupt system too, and the people rightly or wrongly, see through this. I think we are all looking for an authentic, strong, voice that has credibility and will call out the racist tropes of a JD Vance or whoever the republicans put up in 2028. To date I don’t know who those candidates might look like. Do you, David?  

I was curious about Michael’s history and ran some numbers. Due to inflation, $43,000 in 1973 is today the equivalent of about $320,000. And the average house value in Sudbury is currently $1.1 million. So the differential between then and now, in terms of purchasing the same home, is almost $800,000 in today’s dollars. That’s a big change—and you can see how daunting and challenging the prospect of home ownership has become for those trying to enter the market. As for who’s best for 2028, I’m not going to think about that until after the midterms. There are some obvious contenders. There might be some less-obvious alternatives. I’m waiting to see.

Sara S. Nichols emailed:

As an elected progressive delegate to the California Democratic Party, I couldn't agree more with your assessment that voters want candidates that fight hard for affordable housing, healthcare, and childcare. The rhetoric has been there with Dems, but the fight has not. This year I urge every voter in the country to vote in primaries for insurgent Democrats against every Democratic member of Congress (unless you're positive that they are a fighter). Then vote for whatever Democrat wins the primary. 

Peter Stolz quoted my observation that for less-engaged voters, “candidate impression and performance” count more than policies and that voters want “fight vs no fight.” He then commented:

Sounds like Gavin Newsom. Who is fighting more or better than he is? Who makes a better impression?

See my note above. I’m not handicapping ’28ers this far out. But I have enjoyed Newsom’s fighting spirit, and his social media efforts to deride Trump show he’s thinking about how to wage a campaign in this era of trolling and doomscrolling.  

Linda Jack observed:

The GOP can drool all they want about Trump's war chest, but they'll never see a penny. It all will be saved to be spent on him, because without him, the GOP will be irrelevant or even cease to exist, should he fail in fulfilling his fantasy of being re-elected in 2028.

Trump seems worried about being impeached for a third time, as well as about Democrats armed with subpoenas investigating him and his cronies, including his family. The best way for him to prevent that would be to maintain GOP control of the House. Though he probably doesn’t like spending his money on others, my hunch is that he will do so to protect himself.

“Why is that man yelling so much?”
“He’s permanently angry, resentful, and insecure, Moxie, and sees life as a series of wrongs hurled at him.”
“Then he should get a dog.”
“I don’t think that would be fair to the dog.”