My guest tonight is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist,
author of six books, and longtime editor
of The New Yorker. Please welcome David Remnick.
-(cheering and applause) -Hello, sir.
Good to have you back on.
Let's, uh, jump straight into it.
-I know it just happened, -(chuckles): Yeah. It did.
and we-we all just watched it.
But, uh, do you have any initial thoughts
on the speech, like, any themes that jumped out for you?
Well, I-I think you're right.
I think a lot of people are gonna get on television
and they're gonna see a guy who didn't, you know, melt
like the Wicked Witch of the West
or didn't start screaming or going berserk
or didn't start tweeting in the middle of the speech,
and they're gonna say, "Tonight, Donald Trump truly became
"the president of the United States,
and he grew into his job."
No! No!
Because what he does as president is what he does.
-Right. -It's not just reading off a teleprompter
for what seemed like three and a half hours.
Well, what-what relationship does the State of the Union have
with the actual direction the country goes in?
Is this a statement of intent
or should we just look at it as a night
where Donald Trump has a recital
-and we all applaud and then we go home? -Well, historically,
it can be extremely, uh, important
in-in past presidencies.
Um, and-and these are speeches that are labored over
for months. And not just the-the craft of it,
not just the rhetoric of it but the policy direction
-of the country. -Right.
You know, so, you had, you know,
Lyndon Johnson speaking about race.
Or, uh, you know, all kinds of presidents
laying out initiatives that are going to take you forward.
-Right. -And it's very striking to me
that clearly the core of the speech tonight
was about immigration.
And you would think
that the most essential part of immigration
is our fear of immigration.
He talked about MS-13, a-a... admittedly a gang,
you know, a horrible, uh, manifestation
or side manifestation of... of American life,
as if it were way more important
than something he never mentioned once in the speech--
climate change, which is going to change our planet.
-It is already changing our planet... -Right.
...in terms of radical weather events, uh, economies,
the life and death of people in all kinds of countries,
including our own.
Not mentioned once.
This is an existential question.
But MS-13-- a gang on Long Island--
which admittedly has caused heartbreak
in the lives of... of some people and is a real problem,
but it's not a... something that can't be solved.
When you look at that, though, isn't this a byproduct of...
-Fear! -...of America having a president
who consumes most of his information from Fox News?
Because it sounds like a joke, but if you watch Fox News,
there's very little if any time spent on climate change,
but I know there's a lot of segments dedicated
-to the immigrants who are killing... -Well, absolutely.
...and the people who are coming and bringing the drugs,
-bringing the crime. -And it's an information loop.
-Right. -I mean, you can watch the phenomenon.
I think we all have for what seems like ten years now,
but it's only a year, of that morning phenomenon
-of the president watching Fox & Friends... -Right.
...tweeting, and then causing the country
to be in an uproar for the next 24 hours.
I mean, this is... this is not a healthy phenomenon,
and it happens every single day.
When we look at some of the ideas
that Trump had in the speech,
he may not have talked about how he plans to lay them out,
but he did have some interesting ideas.
For instance, I noticed
the Republicans didn't stand and applaud this one.
-But he did say... -Mm-hmm.
-that he wants to work on, um, prison reform. -Absolutely.
He did say he wants to work
on giving prisoners a second chance at life.
So, there were ideas in the speech
where it seemed like Donald Trump was trying
to strike a conciliatory tone.
But is that lip service, or do you genuinely think
he's gonna go out and remember what he said today?
Well, actually, remember that at certain points in his life,
Donald Trump, in so far that... is that he was...
as a political figure at all in New York,
was kind of semi-liberal.
He used to be, um,
-pro-choice, for example. -Mm-hmm.
-Until he was not pro-choice. -Right.
-Um... -Well, he chose not to be.
Now, so...
(laughter)
And-and it's noted that, um,
both on the left and the right now in America,
there is some recognition
that mass incarceration is a horror of American life.
-Right. -That we put people in jail at a rate
that far outstrips any other country in the world.
And it's something that we finally, as a nation,
across the board largely,
conservatives and-and liberals and people in between
-have recognized that this... this is a disaster. -Right.
He's paying some, at least rhetorical, uh...
some lip service to this.
What he'll do about it was not suggested tonight,
but maybe there'll be something. I don't know.
Uh, same with infrastructure.
That's not a ideological question.
Fly into Kennedy Airport, and you realize...
uh, and you think you're... you're somewhere else.
That you're flying into one airport after another
in the country, a train station...
-Right, right, right. -...or a bad road.
It's just not worthy of a... of an economy like ours.
So that-that's not an ideologically question.
Now whether that comes to fruition, I don't know.
But certainly under the Obama administration,
when there were infrastructure initiatives,
the Republican Congress had no interest in doing things
like improving rail service along the East Coast.
So he does have some ideas which are contrary
to what Republicans have espoused for a long time.
Uh, ideas that Donald Trump seems to have come with himself.
Well, he also took credit for a lot of things
that were Obama administration initiatives.
-For example, the policy of the assault on ISIS. -Right.
It's an extension of the policy of the Obama administration.
-Right. -The lowering unemployment was a trend line
that came right out of the Obama administration.
He took credit for all kinds of things having to do
with the automobile industry tonight.
Last I looked, the Obama administration rescued
the automobile industry, uh, in a way
that the Republican party wanted no part of...
-Right. -...if you recall.
So, I don't think he mentioned that tonight.
Well, he definitely didn't mention Obama.
And I was surprised he also didn't mention...
No, but he dissed him a number of times.
-Yeah. It was subtle, but... -He can't help it.
I was surprised that he didn't mention, uh, the FBI.
I was surprised that he didn't mention
what's happening now with the-the memo that, uh, you know,
lawmakers have voted to-to release to the public.
I... Tonight wasn't the night for that.
That'll come in tweets...
(laughter)
...on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday.
So you see, that's my point then.
-Yeah. -But that's an interesting idea.
So, should we compartmentalize Trump
into two different people?
Do we have a Jekyll and Hyde situation here,
where we go, "Okay, you've got like..."
Well, I guess it's like Hyde and Hyde,
-or Jekyll and Jekyll. -That's a lot of Hyde.
I don't know which one's the crazy one.
-It's Trump and Trump. -Yeah.
-It's just less Trump, more Trump. -Exactly it.
Like Tweet Trump versus Talk Trump.
This was the... this was the night where he...
the desired result of all his advisors
would be exactly as you described.
You read off the teleprompter,
you give a lot of narratives that are...
-that touch the heart. -Uh-huh.
We saw a number of those that... This is a...
That's a pattern that's been...
you've seen on, uh, these speeches
-since the Reagan administration. -Right.
Um, so that's kind of set in stone.
And they wanted no disasters.
But meanwhile, what's happening behind the scene?
You've got a president
that's facing obstruction of justice charges.
You've got a president who has said nothing
of any substance whatsoever,
that our Russian adversaries interfered
with the democratic processes, with a democratic election.
-Right. Even voting against the sanctions. -Well, look at...
Or even saying he's not going to impose sanctions on Russia.
Look at the ten minutes he spent on foreign policy tonight.
-Right. -He denounced the authoritarian regime of Iran
and North Korea, rightly so.
No mention of Russia in those terms.
And so I guess that tells us a little bit
about where Trump's mind is.
He's living in his world.
It's MS-13, it's immigration,
he's doing great, and he got you your tax cuts.
-Right, and be... -So, smile, David. Smile.
-Exactly. -Smile. Trump got you.
-We got to rap this up. -I'm happy as hell.
We're running out of time.
-Thank you so much for being on the show. -Great to see you.
Good to see you here. The current issue
of the New Yorker is available now.
You can also hear David every weekend
on The New Yorker Radio Hour.
David Remnick everybody.