Here's the grim truth about Trump's State of the Union

As I considered what to write about Donald Trump’s State of the Union address at the U.S. Capitol tonight, one question nagged: why call it a State of the Union at all? The phrase implies an assessment of the country as it is. What we’ll hear will be a bombastic broadcast about an authoritarian utopia.

This won’t be a State of the Union. As with the rest of his gobbledygook, his self-centered hyperbole, his ludicrous stemwinders, this will be a guide to Donald Trump’s State of Mind.

Nowhere is that more evident than on Truth Social.

If you want a preview of the big speech, don’t consult history books or past presidential addresses or listen to the dingy Karoline Leavitt, Trump’s Secretary of Propaganda.

Scroll through Trump’s Truth Social feed, any day at 3:00 a.m. That’s where the real SOTU draft lives, in all-caps tirades, malicious monologues, and conspiracy-laced hallucinations.

Those whacked-out posts will form the outline of tonight’s “address.” The teleprompter will be little more than a continuous scroll through @realDonaldTrump.

Let’s start with foreign policy. With Trump’s online pronouncements as your template, expect a wild-ride about tariffs, Trump’s lust and true love.

Go back to when his second-term Truth Social Tariff Tilt-a-Whirl Tantrums began. Last January, Trump posted about an “emergency 25 percent tariffs on all Colombian goods,” because Colombia balked at accepting repatriation flights of migrants deported from the U.S.

The tariffs were posted like a punishment. Colombia relented.

Since then, tariffs have been declared, raised, paused, scrapped and re-declared in a dizzying loop, sometimes seemingly in response to court rulings or cable news segments or just plain whim. And always via Truth Social.

On Saturday, in retaliation to the Supreme Court ruling his tariffs illegal, Trump declared a "15 percent Worldwide Tariff, effective IMMEDIATELY.”

On Tuesday night at the Capitol, he will obsess about tariffs, and about how he is WINNING, all because he lost so publicly to SCOTUS. He will be in overdrive. And he’ll publicly scold the justices — or as he called them on Truth Social the "ridiculous (and) dumb" lowercase "supreme court” — some more.

He’ll say something like what he posted recently: that tariffs are “Making America Great Again — GREATER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!”

Then there’s Trump’s Greenland annexation fixation. He’s losing here too, so he’ll try to make it sound the opposite. He'll bounce off his surreal post that the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship, be permanently stationed at Greenland, to “take care of the many people who are sick, and not being taken care of there.”

Greenland and Denmark said an emphatic no to that, so Trump will be out for revenge.

It will be his way to show that he’s “winning” via his supposed compassion for the people of Greenland, and why they should jump on his ship of imperialism.

At SOTU, moments matter. In 2020, disgustingly, Trump used the address to award the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the bigoted and demonic Rush Limbaugh, transforming a prestigious honor into an abject horror show. Speaker Nancy Pelosi rightly ripped that speech to pieces, behind Trump’s back.

It’s hard to imagine that stunt being topped, but I know a way Trump might try.

For years he’s been raging online about the Nobel Peace Prize, including this demented whopper from June last year: “I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for this, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between India and Pakistan, I won’t get a Nobel Peace Prize for stopping the War between Serbia and Kosovo.”

Um, okay, yeah. Given that you didn’t do any of that. Remember, though, that he finally stole a Nobel from an actual winner.

So here’s how he will use SOTU to award himself something, and in the process one-up his honor for Limbaugh. Don’t be shocked if Trump uses his speech to rename the Presidential Medal of Freedom the Trump Medal of Freedom, then asks J.D. Vance to drape one around his rolling rotunda of a neck.

And because everything bends toward him, expect a lengthy detour into Trump’s health. On Truth Social, he has repeatedly described his medical exams as “long, thorough, and very boring,” concluding with “PERFECT Marks.” He posts boasts about how he “aced” cognitive tests and challenges rivals to take the same exam.

He also used Truth Social to call reporting on his health “seditious” and “treasonous,”

Tonight, regardless, the obese, wandering 79-year-old will dramatically declare he’s the healthiest president in history.

From there, the descent into pandemonium will continue. Trump’s feed has become a stream of insults to allies and opponents, including a New Year’s Eve wish that a fellow Republican should “ROT IN HELL,” and the use of his favorite two words, “RIGGED AND STOLEN,” to criticize Bureau of Labor Statistics data and of course elections he didn’t win.

He has laid the groundwork for contesting the midterms, trashing American elections as a global “laughing stock,” warning that without sweeping changes in his favor, “we won’t have a country any longer.”

Expect Republicans to go wild with applause. The hypocritical House Speaker, Mike Johnson, will jump up and down behind him.

The bottom line is that the speech will show no distinction between Truth Social and the State of the Union. Trump’s performance will be a regurgitation of posts, a sullying of a pulpit that once stood for democracy and decency.

By the way, there is a reason the president speaks from the middle rostrum, the Vice President and Speaker placed above him. It’s to show that the people have the power.

Trump wants to destroy that barrier.

His speech won’t be illuminating. It will simply mirror and amplify his feed. And when it’s over, and he gets in his car to return to the White House, he will pull out his phone and post: “Everyone told me, SIR YOU GAVE THE GREATEST SPEECH in the HISTORY of our country tonight.”

• John Casey was most recently Senior Editor, The Advocate, and is a freelance opinion and feature story writer. Previously, he was a Capitol Hill press secretary, and spent 25 years in media and public relations in NYC. He is the co-author of LOVE: The Heroic Stories of Marriage Equality (Rizzoli, 2025), named by Oprah in her "Best 25 of 2025.”