I'm Joe Matthew in Washington. This is special global coverage of the State of the Union addressed tonight in Washington, d C. Kaylee Lines, Rick Davis, and Genie Shanzano are with us in our Washington bureau as we try to unpack what we just heard. A laundry list, certainly, but also a tone from this president that was predicted from the White House, high energy umph behind the speech. He did manage to find spontaneous moments, Kaylee, with a back
and forth with none other than Marjorie Taylor Green. It was the issue of the border that really seemed to light up Republicans tonight in this room.
Absolutely. Marjorie Taylor Green confronting the President from across many rows of seats about Lake and Riley, who we discussed earlier this evening, a college student in Georgia who was killed by a person who was in the country illegally. He did say Lake and Riley's name. He addressed her parents, and leaning on the empathy we have often seen from this president, says he understands what it was like having
lost children him self, what they must be experiencing. Interesting though that on the actual substantive issue of the border, which we knew was going to likely feature heavily into this speech, he didn't get to it until about forty minutes in. He instead began with the issue of Ukraine,
then moving to the issue of democracy. One of the big highlight lines in the first portion of the speech coming from the president, and he was alluding to his predecessor, said that you can't love your country only when you win.
And Joe he said that line after talking about January sixth, and from there, of course, we saw him touch on many other issues, abortion, the economy, and ending the skeeech this evening, addressing what many see as one of his biggest weaknesses as he campaigns for a second term, his age, he said, I've been around a while, trying to play a joke about it, but then also said the issue facing our nation is not how old we are, it's
how old our ideas are. And it was really toward the end of this speech that you saw Biden in campaign mode, not just addressing the Erican people in this Congress as president, but as someone who would like to stay president for another four years.
Show Yeah, Kayllie. We heard him use that line on Late Night with Seth Meyers a couple of weeks ago about whether your ideas are old, and he certainly delivered that here with some emphasis as he did the money line of the night. The state of our union, he said, is strong and getting stronger. Not everyone in the room agrees with that, of course, and I will tell you that in this Statuary Hall, all the lawmakers are now
emerging from the chamber. Senators and members of the House are streaming bias here, and we're going to have conversations with some of them coming up here on Bloomberg for their impressions, as I mentioned D's and R's who sat through this Kalian. Of course, we're now going to be hearing the official Republican response to this address tonight from the President. Yeah.
Senator Katie Britt of Alabama, of course, had forty two years old, the youngest woman Republican ever to be elected to the Chamber, will shortly give the Republican response, and of course we will be bringing you that response live on Bloomberg Television and radio. But we also do want to get the response of our political panel who is still with us, Genie Shanzano of Iona University and Rick
Davis partner at Stone Court Capital. Are still here with me at the Washington Bureau, and Genie, I would like to just begin with you. This speech was over an hour long. One of the big conversations we were having going into it is not what the President said, but how he said it being important. How would you rate his performance this evening? Aside from the policy he outlined.
You know, I have to say I think the performance itself it was energetic. Joe used the word he had a lot of umph. I think it was raucous. He was interacting with members of Congress, and I think performance wise, he may have been able to do what he did last year, which was twell some of the doubts about
his age and his ability. So I think from a performance perspective, I'm not sure that the White House or the campaign could have expected anything more from this president, and I think his experience showed this is Joe Biden in his element. He is, after all, a man of Congress, having served in this body from seventy three to two thousand and nine, after which he went to the White House. So I think this was a night where by performance standards,
he did exceed a lot of expectations. And that's the way Joe Biden likes it. He feels like he's been underestimated for most of his political and professional career, and at those important moments he has done what he needed to do. And I think tonight was one of those nights.
Rick your impressions here of this address, expectations were so high and made even higher by this White House. It promised and energetic Joe Biden at nine o'clock at night, and it sure seemed like we got one. You might not agree with everything he said, but Ricky had the room in the palm of his hand for extended periods of times, and I'd even achieved some back and forth, some call and response with Republicans. Did he meet his goal?
Yeah, I think he did.
I mean, look at how he started this speech out, extremely strong, high paced, very strong wording around democracy, one of his favorite topics.
They went with.
Something that I think he thought he could get comfortable out and sound like he's really embraced it. I think
we also saw the makings of the campaign speech. I mean, one of the things I always look at is what's happening in the first fifteen minutes, because, with all due respect, not everybody sits through the entire speech like we did tonight, and so you want to get the biggest audience around that key terms, and it was democracy, abortion rights, the pandemic, comeback, the economy, and infrastructure, and I think after that the rest of it was much more of a traditional state
of the Union and less campaigning.
Until the end.
He used this opportunity to contrast over a dozen times with his predecessor, the unnamed man in this speech, Donald Trump, and I think it was very aggressive in that case. So I would say this speech was an offensive speech. It was him taking it to Donald Trump, defending the turf he's created for himself and his presidency and talking to voters tonight. Much more so than Congress, and much more so, frankly, than the foreign policy aspects of this.
It was a domestic speech meant for the campaign.
Well, and Rick, as you talk about the idea that he was referencing his predecessor without directly naming him, he also said at one point in the speech that America cannot go back. I'm here tonight to show the way forward. And he went on at the end of the speech with a kind of laundry list of the way that he envisions the future. And I do believe we hear Joe Matthew perhaps greeting a senator as they emerge from
the chamber and will bring you that conversation shortly. But when he talks about the way forward, something else he mentioned Rick was a unity agenda. Is that what this campaign is now going to be about? What is a unity agenda?
Yeah?
I would say it was surprising to me because it was stuck literally at the end of the speech, right as he was wrapping things up, he sort of sprung the unity agenda. He talked about bringing people home from conflicts around the world and taking care of them.
He talked about AI.
It didn't seem to have this sort of cohesiveness that the rest of the speech did.
And frankly, I didn't take the speech as a unity speech.
He wasn't asking Congress to sort of get together and work things out. He was advocating for his views and he actually went after Republicans in the House a number of times when they rejected conservative plans like the immigration bill that came out of the Senate. So I think it must have been an afterthought or something that they tacked on to the end of the speech to try and keep a positive tone to the finish, But to be honest with you, I didn't really see how it fit into the speech.
All right, and we want to go now back to Joe in Statuary Hall, where he is joined by Senator Dick Durbin the Senate majority with Joe.
Yeah. Thanks Cayley, Senator, it's great to see you and welcome back to Bloomberg. On this State of the Union night. I don't know how you managed to get out of the chamber there. The energy seemed high. We were promised a high energy Joe Biden late at night. Did he pull that through for those who were in the room.
Absolutely, the home run strong ideas, strong presentation. But to rest this notion is somehow an elderly man you can't handle the job. He showed real strength to ideas that are important for America's future.
Yeah. Interesting order in topics. We started on Ukraine. We heard about the economy, a lot of other issues before we ever got to the border. Senator, that seems to be the issue that lit up the room. It certainly has been driving the debate here with the President's supplemental emergency request. Did he make any headway there, you're seeing half the room up, half the room down, and it really underscores the division.
Two out of three Americans know what's going on there. As a bipartisan bill proposed in the Senate, which the President supported, James Langford of Oklahoma, a Republican senator, was the lead negotiator. We were ready to move forward or on a bipartisan solution. Guess what happened. Donald Trump said, stop, we don't want to give Joe Biden a victory. Blame it on me, he said, oh, I am, Blame it on him. He stopped any progress on a bipartisan solution.
The President tonight said, stop giving your speeches on the Republican side about the border. Do something. Join me in passing the spill.
You're the majority whip, and you blame Donald Trump for what happened.
I certainly do, he said. He said exactly that, I'm quoting him. Place the blame on me. He's the one who stopped the negotiation, stopped any effort for bipartisanship. So let's ignore him for a minute and solve the problem on a bipartisan basis.
Well, indeed, is the majority whip. You have a sense of the votes. I wonder if we're going to see a vote in the Senate, maybe even tonight, Senator on this stop gap of budget plan that passed the minibus, if we can call it that that passed the House. Do you have work left tonight or is that tomorrow?
Tomorrow?
Will it pass?
I think it will. I think the strong bipartisan support in the House is an indication of what's going to happen in the Senate.
This is the beginning of the general election, as many have called it. This is going to be Joe Biden versus Donald Trump. Americans need to start getting their minds around that.
Yes, they should, and it's important that they do, because this is a clear choice between Biden and Trump. We've seen this match before, but we understand the gravity of it. After January sixth insurrection mob, I mean, the violence that President Trump initiated against this very building and the people who work in it should not be easily forgotten.
Senator Dick Durbin, thank you for spending time with us tonight on Bloomberg. It's good to see you. On the State of the Union evening, Kaylee, I'll send it back to you in the Bureau.
Joe, thank you very much. Of course, as we considered the Senate moving forward on funding the government, there do remain many open questions that Congress still have to deal with, many of which the President spoke about this evening, not just including the bipartisan border measure that he was encouraging to be revived, if you will, after it was very quickly killed shortly after the announcement, but also on the
issue of Ukraine. He touched a well on Israel, remembering that funding for these two allies are wrapped together in a supplemental National security package that has indeed passed the Senate and Genie leading up to this speech, especially in light of the fact that we were just talking about the unity agenda, if you will, there's the question of unity between the different parties. Sure, there's also the question of unity within the party and within the Democratic Party.
The issue of Israel is perhaps one of the more divisive ones. How do you think the President handled that tonight? Did he do a good job of bridging the gap between or bridging the divide if you will, from being supportive of Israel but also trying to be supportive of Palestinian life in Gaza.
Yeah, I mean, he's in a really tough position. He is getting a lot of pushback from his own party. As you mentioned, Kaylee. We even saw two members in the House tonight hold up a sign to Democrats saying cease fire now. So he is getting that pushback. We saw it on Super Tuesday with the number of un committed in places like Minnesota. So the President knows he's
walking this line. As he described himself in this speech, he has been one of the closest friends of Israel for most of his career, but at this point he is trying to do both support Israel in their fight against Thomas and also make the case that they have to be cognizant of the impact they are having on innocent men, women, and children in Palestine. He took the number thirty thousand dead according to the Health Ministry over there. That's been conflicting a lot of people, and he said,
we are going to take steps to do better. I don't know how it's going to play on the Democratic left. This is an issue of real concern also to young people, not just Arab Americans.
Well, and Genie, as you mentioned, we saw that uncommitted vote showing up in Minnesota. We also sought showing up in Michigan first. And on that note, we are joined now by a Congresswoman from Michigan, Representative Haley steven standing by with Joe Joe.
Yeah, Kaylie, we are here with Haley Stevens, who is no stranger to this network and Congresswoman, it's great to see you as a Democrat from Michigan supporting Joe Biden tonight. What were your thoughts on his closing remarks about Israel? He called for a two state solution coming off of the uncommitted movement we've seen in your state in Minnesota and others on Super Tuesday. Did he say enough?
He absolutely said the right things on Israel tonight. And personally, I'm here with liznov Tally, who is the great aunt of four year old Abigail, who was taken hostage for fifty days when she was three years old. She lost both of her parents. There are so many other hostage families in the room here tonight. And as the task force co chair alongside Republican French Hill for American Hostages, that was one of the most sobering pieces of his
really resound and comprehensive speech. And it was a speech of vision, and it was a speech of setting goals, and what he said about getting to a two state solution is still going to be the goal. There is lots of pain, there's lots that we're navigating. A terrorist operation in Gaza known as Hamas has not served its people well, and we need to find peace and that will come when Hamas surrenders.
You disappointed he was not able to announce the ceasefire ar tonight. That was a hope of the administration.
Well, I know he's worked so hard. He's working with Saudi Arabia, he's working alongside Israel. Certainly they presented it a deal, it was rejected by Hamas.
We need answers.
We need these remaining hostages over one hundred, one hundred and fifty three days there to come home. That was an attack on humanity. And we also need to see aid delivered to Palestinians, which the President made a point of. We know that Hamas is preventing aid from coming in. We know that where this conflict is as well, is
preventing aid for innocent Palestinians, mothers and children. And so that's why he said we're setting up a special envoy in the sea to make sure that aid gets delivered with no American troops certainly on the ground of Gaza were of.
Course, waiting for the Republican response to the president's address. Before we wrap up this evening, Sean Fain from the UAW was with the first Lady tonight called out by Joe Biden. We've talked about this before, Congresswoman. The rank and file in this Union, in many cases are voting for Donald Trump. What's the message that they heard tonight from this president or that you hope they heard.
Well, certainly he delivered a very strong and resounding commitment to American manufacturing, to solving supply chain issues, to investing in education and skills training. But here's the thing, Joe Biden's coming to Michigan next week.
He's going to be digging deep.
He's going to be making sure that these union members know who he is, that he's the tough guy in the room, and he's also the honest guy in the room that has a commitment to protecting freedoms, to standing up for creation and making sure that our middle class is at the table. Why we do it, and that's why Sean Pain was here tonight. I was so thrilled to see him get a shout out. Can't wait to have the president back in Michigan.
Well, come talk to us again when you get back to Michigan. Congresswoman, it's great to see you. Hetley Stevens, the Democrat from Michigan with us as part of our special coverage here. Kayley, this is the message that starts now, Rick and Genie, we're talking about this not just members of the cabinet, but the president's Democratic allies fan out across the country to deliver this message starting tomorrow.
Absolutely, as we are now, for all intents and purposes, in the general election in President Biden is very likely to be up against former President Donald Trump eight months from now on the ballot in November. And on that point, we did have reaction to the former president during the course of the State of the Union speech, and Donald Trump points out Rick, it took him over twenty minutes to get to immigration and then, in Trump's words, said
nothing about it. Did he say enough about this subject this evening as the former president right, Well, we.
Were wondering if anybody was going to sleep through the speech, and it's pretty clear maybe President Trump did. I think that the piece on immigration was very interesting, and I thought one of the most engaging parts because it was where he actually took up a discussion directly with Marjorie Taylor Green Yes and engage with her. And it was an ad lib portion of the speech, and she was pushing in a very aggressive way for him to say
Lake and Riley's name, right, say the name. The pen that he had taken from her as he came into the hall was next to his dais, and he picked it up and held it up and he said the name.
And he did something that I think.
Is going to create a little bit of a backlash. So he may have said a lot more than Donald Trump thought he did, and that was he referred to illegals and that was a name, that was a term that he hasn't really used in reference to migrants coming across the border. And we already see across the internet some of the more progressive groups within his coalition basically
pushing back over this portion of the speech. So what's interesting is Donald Trump and the progressives in the Democratic wing seemed to have something in common, which is the President sounded more conservative by defending the bill in the Senate that didn't get a hearing in the House, and that was something that always ruffled the feathers of the
Democrats in the House too. So I think that's going to be one of the things we're talking about for days to come, is this sort of very aggressive approach he took on immigration in this speech.
I'm Joe Matthew in Statutory Hall in the House of Representatives, having just heard from the President and Senator Brittler, joined now by Congressman Brian Style, the Republican from Wisconsin, was in the room, a member of the Financial Services Committee here in the House and chair of the Admin Committee. Congressman Style, it's great to see you. Where to begin after a response like that. You were in the room
for Joe Biden's address. Did he speak to you as a Republican lawmaker when he talked about his unity agenda?
I think the President really missed the opportunity to speak with emotion, as Senator Britch just did about two of the most important issues of the day, the way that illegal immigration is impacting American families across the country and the way that inflation cumulatively seventeen percent is impacting families'
ability to afford the things that they need. I think his comments on the economic policies are pretty disingenuous at times, commenting about the size of a Snickers bar or the amount of chips in a bag, rather than talking about the way that things being seventeen percent more expensive than when he took office are impacting families who are struggling to get by.
You know, we talk about inflation a lot when you're on with US. Congressman J. Powell testified the last two days on Capitol Hill, and he seemed to be pretty optimistic about the fight against inflation, to the point where we're talking about interest rate cuts at some point this year. Would that not be a sign of success in that fight?
Inflation is coming down, but the cumulative impact on families is still quite real. You come to a grocery store in Wisconsin and the checkout counter with me, and you'll hear time and again that families are struggling to be able to afford the things that they need. We've made progress on the fight against inflation, but we're still dealing with the fact that this administration spent trillions of dollars after the end of the pandemic.
Will you be on the trail in this campaign to help Donald Trump deliver his message.
Wisconsin's going to be front and center in the contrast and policy between President Biden and President Trump. Couldn't be more clear. The President doubled down on his policies of keeping the US Mexico border unsecure and refusing to address the fact that inflation is claboring families across the country.
Congressman Bryan's style Republican from Wisconsin. We thank you for the insights, Kayley. That's just a sense of the Republican response here in the room to what we heard from the president tonight and that speech that lasted over an hour. His big opportunity between now and the convention.
Absolutely, and we want to get final thoughts now with our political panel, Rick Davis and Jeanie Schanzano, who are back with me here in Washington. Rick, just quickly, does President Biden leave tonight in a better position than he entered it?
Yeah?
Absolutely so. He was able to start the campaign with a full annunciation of his priorities for the general election. It's democracy, abortion rights, the economy, and infrastructure. He's ready to take it to Donald Trump. Katie Brik gave the response that's the Donald Trump campaign.
Genie, your thoughts, Yeah, I think performance wise, Joe Biden did everything he needed to do. Republicans who were hoping that he makes an error have to be disappointed because he did not, and Democrats seem to be widely enthusiastic. He is the Joe Biden they wanted to see. He was interacting with members, he was open, he was energetic. So a good performance night for Joe Biden.
All Right, Jeanie Schanzano and Rick Davis, thank you so much for being with us on the State of the Union evening, and thank you to all of you listening on radio and watching on television for joining us for this special coverage of the State of the Union Address and the Republican response on Bloomberg TV and Radio four. Joe Matthew at Capitol Hill. I'm Kaylee Wines in Washington. This is mem