TRUMP'S SOTU REVEALED AN INCREDIBLY SHRINKING PRESIDENCY HELD TOGETHER BY CHEAP TRICKS AND A LITANY OF LIES

THE NARATIV - KNOW SOONER

1. 💣 THE OPRAH PRESIDENCY

The verdict is in. Trump’s State of the Union wasn’t a presidential address. It was a two-hour daytime TV special — medals, hockey teams, tearful reunions, and audience shaming — produced by a man who knows ratings but can’t run a country. He peppered the longest SOTU in 60 years with Oprah-style giveaways: a Presidential Medal of Freedom for the hockey goalie, a Medal of Honor for a Korean War vet, story after manufactured story designed to force Democrats to stand and applaud or be called unpatriotic on camera. Ellen and Oprah built their shows for exactly this. The presidency was not built for this. But when your tariffs just got struck down 6-3, your DHS is shut down for the 11th day, your DOJ is hiding Epstein files that name you in child sexual abuse allegations, and your approval rating is at 41 percent — a TV show is all you’ve got left. Stephen Miller jumped on social media to call seated Democrats “the most shocking image in the history of the US Congress.” This is the same chamber a Trump mob tried to storm five years ago. The only things worth watching for the actual direction of the country — Iran, the economy, the collapse of democratic institutions — were buried under cheap tricks and a meme race to the bottom. The SOTU is now an apt device for what remains of the office itself: a vacant shell of what it used to be. A completely fake veneer held up by boards like an old movie set.

2. 🎖️ DOJ HIDES TRUMP ABUSE FILES

While Trump was performing for the cameras, an NPR investigation revealed what was happening behind the curtain. The DOJ withheld more than 50 pages of FBI interviews with a woman who accused Trump of sexually abusing her when she was 13 — including four FBI interviews, three of which have never been made public. House Oversight Democrat Robert Garcia reviewed unredacted evidence logs and confirmed: the DOJ appears to have illegally withheld these records. Democrats brought Epstein survivors to the speech wearing “Release the Files” pins. The man who claimed the files “totally exonerated” him is now the subject of a cover-up investigation by his own Justice Department.

3. ⚖️ GENEVA: WAR ON TWO FRONTS

Thursday is the most consequential day of the year so far. Iran nuclear talks Round 3 and Ukraine pre-talks both converge in Geneva, both mediated by Witkoff and Kushner. The US has assembled its largest Middle East military deployment in decades. Satellite imagery shows every Navy vessel in Bahrain scattered to sea — the same formation used before the June strikes. Iran’s foreign ministry compared Trump to Goebbels. If talks fail, strikes could follow. No plan for what comes after.

4. 📉 KASH PATEL’S OLYMPICS HOLIDAY

The FBI director’s four-day taxpayer-funded trip to the Milan Olympics included one 20-minute security briefing, hours of “personal time/cultural activities,” and a celebratory beer with the hockey team. The same trip that may have delayed FBI response to a mass shooting at Brown University. Senate Democrats cited whistleblower allegations that Patel’s use of one of the FBI’s two jets left the elite response team unable to deploy. This is the man running America’s premier law enforcement agency.

5. 🌍 PRESS UNDER SIEGE

A federal judge blocked DOJ from conducting an “unsupervised, wholesale search” of Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson’s seized devices — then took the extraordinary step of saying the court itself would review the contents, because the judge doesn’t trust the government to do it. Natanson covers Trump’s campaign to fire federal workers. She’s not accused of any crime.

🎯 THE PATTERN

The SOTU was the pattern made visible. A presidency that functions as a shell of its former self. Spending considerable time and energy on manufacturing moments, suppressing evidence, rewarding loyalists with taxpayer-funded junkets, and punishing journalists who document it. Trump gave out medals to hockey players while his DOJ hid FBI interviews about child sexual abuse allegations against him. Kash Patel watched the same hockey game on the government dime while the FBI couldn’t respond to a mass shooting. The reporter who covers the federal workforce Trump is dismantling had her home raided. This isn’t governance. It’s a protection racket dressed up as a presidency

THANK YOU FOR WATCHING “THE STATE OF DIS UNION” SPECIAL LAST NIGHT. WE NEED THE DAY TO RESET, THE FIVESTACK WILL BE BACK TOMORROW.