It’s that time of year again, the President’s annual State of the Union Address delivered to Congress.
For President Biden, it will be a speech about ignoring the reality of his own presidency, downplaying the various crises he’s helped perpetuate, and blaming “MAGA Republicans” for all that ails the world.
You can tune in live just before 9 pm ET to watch the pageantry and kabuki theater involved with Biden’s entrance to the House chamber.
On the Republican side, newly-elected Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders has been tapped to deliver the GOP response.
Biden 2023 State of the Union
When: Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2023
Where: House Chamber in the U.S. Capitol Building
Full Video: Watch below
Full Video – 2023 Biden SOTU
Here’s the full video of Biden’s 2023 State of the Union speech.
Full Video – Gov. Sanders GOP Response
Full video of the SOTU response delivered by Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders:
What to Expect
What is Biden expected to say tonight? He’ll likely extol the virtues of his bad economy, downplay problems created by his administration, and give himself high marks for the raging dumpster fire that is the U.S. southern border. The theme will be blaming Joe Biden’s shortcomings on everyone else around him since the buck never stops on his desk.
What he won’t be saying, according to the New York Times, are any tricky acronyms that usually cause his train of thought to derail. In that sense, the Times is providing a downplay of expectations ahead of the main event due to Joe Biden’s stutter and tendency to mangle the English language:
Preparations for Mr. Biden’s State of the Union speeches begin weeks in advance. Several aides described a process in which the president demands that sentences be written clearly — no acronyms! — and illustrate his legislative accomplishments in terms real people can understand. He spends weeks working on each speech with his writers, reading over and over again, top to bottom, and out loud.
Mr. Biden does not make notations to navigate his stutter for every speech, but he has done so for some of his more consequential addresses and meetings with foreign leaders in the Oval Office. He has remarked to a former aide that one of the hardest things for a stutterer to do is deliver remarks while standing up — which, that person pointed out, is his day job. Others say it looks as though Mr. Biden is marking up a piece of music as he prepares.
The takeaway will be less about Biden’s delivery and more about the content of the steaming pile of garbage he’s serving up.
The other wildcard in the room, beyond Biden’s own limitations, is the Chinese spy balloon that was eventually shot down off the coast of South Carolina after it was allowed to traverse the country gathering data.
As Axios notes, China is an uninvited guest to the House Chamber tonight:
China will be an uninvited guest at President Biden’s State of the Union address Tuesday night, as he takes credit for a resilient economy, celebrates record-low unemployment, and previews a broader domestic agenda designed to unify the country.
Why it matters: The stakes are high for Biden as he emphasizes a series of accomplishments and tries to control the narrative about his administration as it faces investigations by House Republicans. Now, a balloon from China has complicated that.
Biden and his speechwriters are prepared to be nimble — and likely rewrite — the China sections of the speech, as officials weigh Beijing’s response to the U.S. military’s downing of the surveillance balloon after it drifted across North America.
The Biden administration is plainly being played and tested by the Chinese Communist Party. The balloon is a symbol of a weak President standing in a weakened posture on the world stage.
This year’s SOTU will be somewhat of a launchpad for Biden’s 2024 campaign, assuming he’s still planning to run for re-election. He’ll be taking a victory lap, no doubt, for the midterms where Democrats did better than expected.
While Biden praises himself and praises his efforts on the economy, the backdrop of reality finds that a large number of Americans now say they’re financially worse off under his presidency than they were previously. Furthermore, Biden would now lose to Trump in a hypothetical 2024 matchup:
Four in 10 Americans say they’ve gotten worse off financially since Joe Biden became president, the most in ABC News/Washington Post polls dating back 37 years. Political fallout includes poor performance ratings for Biden and a tight hypothetical Biden/Trump rematch next year.
Given disaffection with both leaders, a rerun of the 2020 presidential election is hardly enticing: Nearly six in 10 Democratic-aligned adults don’t want to see Biden nominated again for the job, and half on the Republican side would rather not see Donald Trump as their party’s nominee.
If those were the choices and the election were today, the poll suggests it could be close: Among all adults, 48 percent support Donald Trump and 44 percent are for Biden; it’s a similar 48-45 percent among registered voters. The differences are within the poll’s margin of sampling error.
Here’s the real cliffhanger of the night:
First page of Biden’s SOTU speech.
Will he or won’t he read the word “pause”??
Comments?? pic.twitter.com/Y9XGPyvmdR
— S????™ (@fitfan777) February 7, 2023
Tune in around 9 pm ET to watch the circus unfold.
