Your survival guide to watching Trump’s State of the Union...

There is no reason for anyone to watch one minute of these things unless they have been foolish enough to choose a career — such as in, say, journalism — that requires it. And don’t get me started on the endless, infantile standing ovations. If you want to know how far our country has declined, watch how few ovations and rounds of applause interrupted a genuinely important speech — Franklin Roosevelt’s address following Pearl Harbor in 1941. Compare and contrast with how Congress will react tonight if the president announces, say, a tax break on American-grown avocados. But if you are a masochist and insist on watching, certain things are guaranteed in every state-of-the-disunion speech, and Tuesday’s will be no exception. Chief among them: statements without clearly defined facts attached, meaning that they can neither be proved nor disproved; statements involving cherry-picked facts; and promises. All of these, without exception, are completely worthless and should be ignored. Anyone can make grand claims that can’t be tested. Anyone can make promises. As for cherry-picked data? The St. Louis Federal Reserve lists more than 610,000 separate sets of economic statistics in its database (yes, really). So I am absolutely confident that if my job were to find some statistics that make this president look and sound good, I could do so. I am also confident I could do the reverse. So what? The president may report that the number of 401(k) millionaires has hit a new high. He’s right. But it does that almost every quarter, except during bear markets. The number of 401(k) millionaires repeatedly hit highs under Biden, Trump 1.0, Obama and so on. It even did it under George W. Bush, before it … er … didn’t. As for promises? Nearly a year ago Trump, in his March 2025 address to a joint session of Congress, promised to purge more than 20 million dead people from Social Security, saving trillions of U.S. taxpayer dollars. You can watch the clip here. (Don’t miss the sad, pained look on the face of House Speaker Mike Johnson, as he hears about this terrible supposed fraud and abuse.) The reality? In February of last year, just before that Trump speech, there were 68.4 million people claiming Social Security — or 73 million, if you also include people claiming Supplemental Security Income. Today: The number claiming Social Security is … um … 70.2 million. That’s 1.6 million more than when Trump was speaking. If you include SSI, the total number is 75 million, an increase of 2 million. There were no 20 million dead people claiming Social Security. Ever. Trump’s promise, like all these promises, was completely worthless. It was, of course, much the same with then–government employee Elon Musk’s repeated promises to cut “$2 trillion” or “$1 trillion” (or whatever) from the federal budget. Totally worthless. Federal spending this year is actually slightly higher than last year’s, reports the Congressional Budget Office. There have no doubt been some efficiencies, but there are no massive savings. There never could have been without cutting Social Security, Medicare, defense and veterans’ benefits, or defaulting on the national debt. Promises are free. Anyone can make promises, just as anyone can make statements that cannot be factually tested, and anyone can cherry-pick statistics. All such statements, we repeat, are totally worthless. Mortgages, jobs and the economy Meanwhile, to the terrific disappointment of partisans on both sides of the aisle, the actual core data from the economy are mixed. According to federal data, the consumer-price index has risen 2.4% since Trump came to office in January of last year, while average weekly wages in the private sector have risen 4.3%. Therefore real, inflation-adjusted wages are up. The interest rate on 30-year fixed rate mortgages has fallen, from 7% to around 6%. Job numbers have risen, but barely. In January of last year there were 163.8 million Americans in work. Today there are 164.5 million, a rise of just 0.4%. Meanwhile the number of official unemployed has risen by a surprising 7.2%, from 6.865 million to 7.362 million. And the percentage of the workforce that is “underemployed,” using the long-running measure of labor-market slack known as U6, has risen from 7.5% to 8%. (The U6 counts the unemployed alongside those who are working part-time only because they can’t find a full-time job, plus those who have actually given up trying to find a job.) And unanswered is what the economy would actually look like if the president had gotten his way. For all of last year the president and his acolytes raged at the Federal Reserve and Chairman Jerome Powell, insisting they slash short-term interest rates to 1% or even lower. The campaign has been without precedent, and now involves two legal attacks on Fed officials — one against Powell, whom Trump selected to lead the Fed in the first year of his earlier White House term, and one against Lisa Cook. Would the economy be in better shape if the campaign had succeeded, and the Fed was obeying his commands? It’s dollars to doughnuts that inflation would certainly be much higher — which might be a good thing or might not, depending on your point of view. Oh, and if the president claims in his speech that slashing short-term interest rates would somehow save taxpayers trillions in interest payments, that at least is a statement that can be factually tested — and disproved. The Fed only controls short-term interest rates, and most of the national debt’s interest is tied to medium- and longer-term rates. (To be sure, the Fed could seek to control all interest rates by printing trillions of new dollars and using the money to buy up medium- and long-term Treasury bonds. What would that do to inflation? Perhaps we are going to find out.) I don’t see why any sentient person would watch one of these things unless they had to, or enjoyed pain. It is a struggle to think of a less productive way of spending an hour or two of your life.