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CNN Live Event/Special

President Trump's State of the Union Address. Aired 12-12:30a ET

Aired February 25, 2026 - 00:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[00:00:56]

ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: And welcome back to CNN's coverage of President Trumps State of the Union address. The president setting a record for the longest State of the Union speech. Speaking for nearly two hours, President Trump touted how America is winning under his leadership.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

DONALD TRUMP, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We're not used to winning in our country until you came along with just always losing.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The president going on to list several new policies which he says will tackle the affordability crisis, including pledging new retirement accounts and preserving Social Security. He also didn't shy away from a swipe at the Supreme Court justices, who ruled against his signature tariff policy.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: An unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court. It just came down. It came down. Very unfortunate ruling. But the good news is that almost all countries and corporations want to keep the deal that they already made, right, Scott? Knowing that the legal power that I, as president, have to make a new deal could be far worse for them.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: The president also laying out his case for military action against Iran.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: My preference is to solve this problem through diplomacy. But one thing is certain, I will never allow the world's number one sponsor of terror, which they are by far, to have a nuclear weapon. Can't let that happen.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: It wasn't all policy tonight. The president using the opportunity to attack Democrats a number of times throughout the night.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

TRUMP: These people are crazy. I'm telling you. They're crazy. You should be ashamed of yourself. They don't like to hear that. One of the sick people. They're sick people. Boy, oh, boy. We're lucky we have a country with people like this. Democrats are destroying our country.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

COOPER: Some of the moments from this evening -- Jake.

JAKE TAPPER, CNN ANCHOR: All right. Thank you so much.

The first results from our CNN instant poll are in. So let's bring in CNN political director David Chalian.

David, what do they say?

DAVID CHALIAN, CNN POLITICAL DIRECTOR: Yes well, I just want to take a moment here to explain. This is a poll of speech watchers. So it is not a poll that is reflective of the population overall. And what we know about people who tune in to State of the Union addresses, they tend to be fans of the president, whichever president is giving the speech. So the polling universe here is about 13 points more Republican than the overall population usually is.

So just keep all that in mind as we go to the results of our instant poll. Get this reaction from those that watch the speech tonight. 38 percent said they had a very positive reaction to the speech, 25 percent somewhat positive, 36 percent negative. So roughly two-thirds in the positive territory, one-third negative among speech watchers.

How does that very positive number stack up against previous addresses? Well, look here. It's about six percentage points lower than Donald Trump was at with the very positive score last year. He was at 44 percent very positive reaction last year. This year 38 percent. Even though the universe of speech watchers was actually even a bit more Republican than it was last year.

And we also took a look at that very positive speech reaction here compared to previous presidents in this midterm year. So in 2026, this year, tonight, 38 percent very positive reaction. Joe Biden, four years ago, 41 percent very positive reaction. That was the year Democrats lost control of the House. You see Trump in 2018 was at 48 percent very positive when he -- his party lost control of the House in his first term.

So you see here, again, Donald Trump is at the bottom of this. I think these polls, even by fans of the president, people who tuned in to watch tonight, and he gets a two-thirds overall positive reaction, I still think you're seeing his overall trouble in the polls these days, which is that he's at a low point even compared to a year ago when he gave his speech to a joint session.

[00:05:01]

TAPPER: Let's bring in Pete Buttigieg. He served as transportation secretary under President Biden.

Secretary Buttigieg, good to see you. So what's your reaction to the speech? What's your reaction to the results from our instant poll?

PETE BUTTIGIEG, FORMER TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY: Well, I'm not surprised that those numbers seem to suggest that this is, if I understand them right, the weakest performance ever, at least the weakest performance ever by President Trump in a State of the Union because there's this big disconnect between the tone he's taking, everything is going along fine, and we're just going to do more of it, and what people are actually feeling at home, where things are more expensive and the country feels like it is even more chaotic than it may have been before.

And so, remember, the central promise of this -- of his campaign, certainly the day one promise of his presidency is, I will make things more affordable for you. He's come in. He's done the opposite. And by the way, that's not only that he has tried and failed to cut prices or cut inflation, that would be bad enough. But that he's actually actively increased our costs. And you can't trick people about that.

Look, about $1,000 a household is what his tariffs cost the average American household last year. And maybe to him and his billionaire allies, the kinds of people who got most of his tax cuts, maybe that's not a lot of money. But of course, to most Americans, $1,000 is a lot of money. You notice that in your family budget and you can't be tricked about that by the president spinning stories for a two-hour long speech.

TAPPER: So let's talk about a couple of things having to do with affordability since you're bringing that up, which is obviously a vulnerability for the president right now. One of them is that people who are using the argument of affordability right now, Democrats, are the same ones that supported the Biden policies that created the huge spike in inflation and created, in his view, the mess that we're in.

How do you respond to that?

BUTTIGIEG: Yes, if he was in his first few months he might have been able to get away with that. But now that we're in the second year, and remember, Americans understand exactly what these tariffs did to them. That's why they're so unpopular. That's why the American people overwhelmingly disapprove of the president's handling of inflation and the economy. We know that he is making us pay a tax called a tariff on the things that we buy every day.

And even though the Supreme Court held that many of the tariffs he implemented were illegal and struck them down, it's not clear that he's -- he certainly doesn't seem to have any intention of giving us our money back as Americans. And we know that some of those tariffs are still on the books and we're still paying what will be at least hundreds of dollars per household right now. One of the many lies he told tonight was that other countries are paying it. Again, you can't trick Americans about that because we see that on our bills.

So of course blame shifting is a very typical thing you're going to see from this White House but given that we all saw with our own eyes him implementing the tariffs and charging us more, we all saw that it was Republicans who were against the lower health care premiums, given that we all saw the tax cuts for billionaires that this president passed in his first year, I think it's pretty hard to suggest that the economic problems can be traced to the previous administration.

By the way, the other thing really important about the tariffs, they didn't work, right? So it's not just that we're paying more, it's that these economic measures are getting worse. We saw economic growth dramatically slowing in the last quarter. We saw manufacturing jobs which went up and up and up. They went down in the course of the last year. So you got to ask yourself, well, what's changed in 2025 compared to before? And obviously what changed is the president.

TAPPER: There are some other things that the president talked about that would address affordability even if the president said that it was kind of a Democratic invented issue, and also that Democrats started to begin with. They are -- they include the fact that taxes on tips and taxes on overtime are going to be eliminated because of provisions from the bill that passed last year.

He talked about the housing crisis and not banning Wall Street companies from buying up houses to rent to prevent people from being able to buy them. He talked about a measure, Trumprx, which would lower the cost of prescription drugs. I mean, he is acknowledging in a way, even if he's saying that things are great, he is acknowledging that there's a lot more that can be done.

BUTTIGIEG: Yes, but in every case, it's window dressing, right? The Trumprx thing, which is largely taking credit for kind of an existing coupon program, as I understand it, doesn't really balance out the fact that the Republicans are making so many Americans pay more on their health care premiums.

The tax on tips thing, which I think is great to have that be tax free, but it doesn't really outweigh the fact that so many Americans are facing the cost of the major, major tax cuts for billionaires. That was, of course, that and the corporate tax cuts. That's the main focus of his tax policy.

The housing piece, you know, I am also skeptical of these firms going in and buying houses but for the other 99 percent of houses that aren't owned by those kinds of firms, we've got to hear more of a clear plan.

[00:10:08]

And, you know, one of the things that's making it hard to afford a mortgage right now is interest rates. Interest rates are pushed up by the enormous deficits created by the Trump tax cuts for the wealthiest and the corporations. So in every case, he's offering a little droplet of something. Some things I might even agree with but that little droplet goes into a bucket of things he has done to actively make the problem worse.

And I think folks sitting at home, my neighbors in Michigan, folks I meet in my travels see it. You know, I was just -- I just met a brewer in New Hampshire who was walking me through just how much more a beer costs now, can a beer that they produce because of the tariffs. And whether we're talking about a can of beer, whether we're talking about automotive equipment coming in, we see it left and right, we're feeling it.

And everybody knows, or at least the vast majority of Americans get that we are paying more specifically because of Donald Trump's policies.

TAPPER: A brewer in New Hampshire, you said?

BUTTIGIEG: Yes. It was a good example of how like this isn't just something going into industrial goods, like a can of beer. And, you know, it's a small business kind of place that a lot of people gather at and count on as --

TAPPER: No, no, I get it.

(CROSSTALK)

BUTTIGIEG: Saying, look, I can't eat all of those costs. Some of those got to go to our consumers.

TAPPER: No, I just -- I didn't know, like I went to college in New Hampshire. I just didn't know if you know that that's actually where they have the first in the nation primary. But just what I -- just on the top of my head.

Secretary Buttigieg, good to see you. Thank you so much.

BUTTIGIEG: Good to be with you. Thanks.

TAPPER: Anderson?

COOPER: Hey, thanks very much.

Back now with the panel. I want to put up the insta poll that David Chalian talked about. Very positive reaction to president's speeches over the years.

John King, I mean, it's interesting President Trump 2018, 48 percent positive speech to this one, 38 percent.

JOHN KING, CNN CHIEF NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: So I said immediately after the speech, I thought one of his challenges that he might have helped himself with tonight was his decline in polls among Republicans recently. He's way down among independents. He's down among Latinos. He's down among just about every voting group in the country, but including Republicans, which is critical heading into a base election year just if Republicans want to preserve the House, which I think is almost impossible at this point, their House majority, but keep the Senate, win governor's races.

That suggests, this instant poll, and again, it's a quick snapshot of people watching the speech that he maybe a little bit but not as much as he would have liked. I'll say this, that this is from my travels over the last several years including just in the last couple of months where I've spent a lot of time with Trump voters. Donald Trump has been the dominant figure in our politics for 11 years now, since he came down that escalator.

I do think that even among some of his own supporters, there's some Trump-haustion or Trump fatigue setting in, that we just -- OK, you know?

COOPER: Did you say Trump-haustion?

KING: Trump-haustion. Yes. You find that more among Democrats. But you have -- I have found so many people from Bernie Sanders supporters to the Trumpiest of Trump supporters saying they're just not watching as much television. They're not engaging as much on social media in the second term because they remember what it did to their blood pressure in the first term. And so they're putting their mental health away from the political debates.

And I don't think it's unusual. You see this. We were having the conversation earlier about, you know, out in Iowa, a state that's been Republican a long time. Democrats think they have a shot in the governor's race this year. Is that just because of Trump's numbers? No, it's because you've had Republican leadership for a long time. I'm from Massachusetts. Everyone says that's a blue state. Massachusetts every now and then elects a Republican governor. It's a way of saying to the Democrats, go think about this for a while. We're done with you for a little bit.

DAVID AXELROD, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL ANALYST: There's another reason why Iowa is in contention, which is it was -- it's the state that's been hit harder by tariffs than any other state and the fact that the president announces tonight his continued determination, good news, we're going to keep these tariffs in place. We're going to use other devices and so on. You heard the group in Michigan. I don't think that's going to land very well.

KING: But I think part -- I think part of that is, look, you do not win the presidency without being an excellent politician. Whatever your party is, whatever your name is. You don't win the presidency without being a fantastic performer. And Donald Trump is a fantastic performer. But I think if you just think about this since he plays to the camera all the time, since he gets it, he's very good at the entertainment part of politics and everything, it is not out of the realm to think that I've watched this show long enough, that enough people are out there just saying, I've just seen this a lot. It's the same. It's -- what he does is the same every time.

PATRICK MCHENRY (R), FORMER SPEAKER PRO TEMPORE: If inflation is low and wages are rising, the president is popular, period, end of statement.

KING: Right.

MCHENRY: That is Bill Clinton's success in the '90s, was riding this wide, wide wave of economic growth and prosperity. When you have prosperity, you have popularity among the governing class?

ABBY PHILLIP, CNN ANCHOR: So why is it not true right now? I think --

MCHENRY: So here is the question, which is, can the president land a trade deal with China? That is the next big set piece of our politics globally, but especially here domestically in the United States.

KING: If he did that tomorrow, what would it show in the pocketbook of working class Americans so in eight months? That's the president's problem. Even if he puts --

MCHENRY: That is the question. Not the problem. That is the question.

(CROSSTALK)

[00:15:01]

KING: Can you change the dynamic by November?

PHILLIP: If you're already unhappy with this president, did he say or do anything tonight that would change your opinion of him? I think the answer is probably no. He was true to form in all of the ways that if you love him, you love him, if you hate him, you hate him. I don't think he changed people's view of him and that's what the poll of viewers shows us is that he is unpopular about 36 percent, 34 percent in some polls.

The number -- the percentage of people who thought that they were very happy with what they heard tonight was about 38 percent. That tracks. I don't think that the president is changing people's minds about him, about what they think the trajectory of the country is. And I think you're right. Generally speaking, if inflation is going down, wages are going up that should mean he's a popular president, but he's not a popular president.

And part of that is because the measure of inflation is not from 9 percent where it was at its worst from Biden to now. It's where it was when he started to now, which is that its only down a couple of ticks. And that's what Americans are seeing.

AXELROD: No speech is going to cure that.

PHILLIP: They -- you can't -- even if you want to play around with the statistics, you can't make people feel like the last three years didn't happen to them.

COOPER: Coming up, do voters think President Trump is moving the country in the right direction, to Abby's point? We're going to have more from our CNN instant poll.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[00:20:06]

TAPPER: We're just minutes away from new data. New data from what? From our CNN instant poll. But first, how did President Trump's statements about the economy stack up compared to reality?

CNN's Daniel Dale is here with the fact check. Daniel?

DANIEL DALE, CNN SENIOR CORRESPONDENT: Jake, there was just a lot of lying tonight. I counted at least 15 false claims, plus a bunch more misleading claims. A lot of them were the greatest hits you hear at President Trump's rallies. Things like U.S. elections are rife with cheating. They're not -- the Democrats can't win without cheating. That's nonsense. The mail-in ballots are crooked. More nonsense.

That he has ended wars that never actually started, or that clearly have not ended. But what I thought was most notable from a fact- checker's perspective was that by far the single subject with the most false and misleading claims was the economy. That key subject on which he's struggling in the polls. So he claimed, for example, explicitly, that his tariffs are paid for by foreign countries. That is simply false.

The tariff payments are made by U.S. importers, and we know from study after study and just from living that they often pass on some or all of those costs to consumers, average Americans. He claimed he's secured $18 trillion in investment in just a year.

Jake, that number is total fiction. The White House's own Web site at this moment or at least earlier tonight used a $9.7 trillion figure, way lower. Even that figure is a wild exaggeration. He said he inherited a stagnant economy, now it's roaring like never before? Growth in 2025 was 2.2 percent. That was lower than each and every year of the Biden administration. So just totally contradicting that narrative.

President Trump said he inherited record inflation. He didn't. He inherited 3.0 percent inflation, though it was a 40-year high, about 9.1 percent more than two years before he took office. And then it came down. And there is inflation today, contrary to his claim that there's no inflation. It was 2.4 percent in January.

And then I think he was super misleading, Jake, on the subject of what I think is the most important price in American politics, gas prices. He said they're now below $2.30 a gallon in most states, and in some places, $2 -- $1.99 a gallon. There is no state, not a single one where the AAA state average today was below $2.37. That was Oklahoma. And as for that $1.99 claim,

GasBuddy told me that of the 150 gas -- 150,000 gas stations the company tracks across the country, there were just four this evening, four out of 150,000 that were selling for $1.99 per gallon or less aside from special discounts. So there was a ton of dishonesty tonight. I can't get to it all right

here, but I encourage viewers to go check out our full, detailed written fact-check on CNN.com and our app -- Jake.

TAPPER: Daniel, thank you so much, and condolences on your Canadian hockey team.

CNN political director David Chalian is back with more data in the CNN instant poll -- David.

CHALIAN: Yes. So, you know, that classic question, right direction, wrong direction. We asked that about Trump's policies among speech watchers. Now, remember, this is a poll among speech watchers. So it is a much more Republican universe that got polled here because Republicans tune in in greater numbers for a Republican president's State of the Union address. And the results will show you exactly that. 64 percent say Trump's policies would move the country in the right direction, 36 percent say the wrong direction.

I just want you to know, our poll of the overall electorate is the exact opposite of that. So in the overall population, he's upside down this way. But among speech watchers tonight, 64 percent say his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction. And look at the growth President Trump made over the speech. So pre-speech it was 54 percent of speech watchers said his policies will move the U.S. in the right direction.

After the speech, that number goes up 10 percentage points. So Donald Trump made some progress with people watching the speech from their pre-speech expectations to what they saw in the speech itself. And that 64 percent number, that's pretty much in range across all of his State of the Union addresses, in his first term, last year, the Joint Session, that's about what we've seen is roughly two-thirds have walked away from his speeches thinking he's going to move it in the right direction.

TAPPER: So a lot of red meat for the base.

CHALIAN: Yes. No doubt about that. If you're a Republican on the ballot in 2026, I think you leave this speech being as happy as you could possibly be that he sort of stuck to the script on the economy. He gave red meat to the base on immigration, and they can leave the hall tonight and sort of take that out on the campaign trail.

TAPPER: What if you are, say, a Republican in a battleground district, then how do you leave?

KASIE HUNT, CNN ANCHOR: Well, I mean, that's sort of my question honestly for you, David, since you think about all of this in such a big picture way all the time. I mean, it used to be, it seems to me, that the State of the Union was an opportunity to talk to people who otherwise weren't going to listen to you. Right? Who you didn't necessarily have a chance to talk to all the time through your fundraising e-mails or whatever.

You were talking to a wider audience. It seems like now this is what we hear from people who are running campaigns every day, which is that this game is about turning out your base of supporters. I mean, like Mike Lawler, he's stuck because, yes, he needs independents not to go running to the Democrats, but he can't win if Trump's base stays home.

(CROSSTALK)

TAPPER: Mike Lawler, a Republican in a swing district in New York.

CHALIAN: That's probably why we saw Lawler right at the end of the speech --

(CROSSTALK)

HUNT: Standing on the aisle.

CHALIAN: Exactly. Exactly that point. Listen, it's not just a base thing, right? You do need independents and Trump is really in a world of hurt with independents right now. Even in our poll tonight of speech watchers, those that identify as independent gave a much lower, very positive score than he got from independents last year.

KAITLAN COLLINS, CNN ANCHOR: And before the speech, the White House had been holding these meetings. They were urgently trying to find ways to bring down costs for voters because they do believe the numbers. They know how bad it is. They don't believe all the numbers are fake. They don't believe they're all exactly right. But they don't believe that they're all fake, like the president has dismissed them.

He didn't announce new proposals on that front tonight. He's talked about things that he wants Congress to do. A lot of those things on health care and whatnot. We have not seen Congress move on at all. They're at a complete standstill on anything with that. So that is a question of whether and how that momentum changes, because you saw those interactions with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib tonight.

The White House is very worried that Democrats are going to be in control come November, starting next year. And it is going to completely reshape what the presidency looks like for him.

TAPPER: What did you think of the president calling Democrats crazy? What did you think -- I mean, like, obviously that's his DNA, et cetera. But, you know, what is it? A third of the country is Democrats. That doesn't mean they necessarily identify with the Democratic Party or members of Congress. But --

DANA BASH, CNN CHIEF POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: I think if this was 10 years ago, nine years ago, it would have been an OMG moment. But for Donald Trump, it's baked in whether it's at the State of the Union or at, you know, at a campaign rally or on his Truth Social. It does feel a little bit different. I think that this is where you're going when you have such an important speech, and it is for the entire country, and it's, you know something that people are used to having a little bit more composure and a little bit --

HUNT: Decorum?

BASH: Decorum. Thank you.

HUNT: They used the word.

TAPPER: Going back nine years, I'm thinking back to when I covered Obama at the White House and Obama -- when President Obama gave a speech one time criticizing Paul Ryan's Medicaid plan or Medicare plan, Paul Ryan was just, I think he was chairman of the House Budget Committee, and he was in the audience. And Obama was criticizing his plan and you would have thought that he killed his puppy.

BASH: No, but that's what I'm saying.

TAPPER: From the reaction.

BASH: It's like it's totally different now.

TAPPER: Well, here's my question. Are we ever going back to --

BASH: I don't know. I mean that's --

TAPPER: Are we ever coming back to a place where you can't just call the other party crazy in the State of the Union address?

HUNT: I mean, Jake, the number of times that now, like, if you had told me that when I was a kid coming up and maybe wanting to do something like this one day that you were going to be able to say, like, swear on the air and it was going to be cool for politicians to drop the F bomb, right? Like my grandparents would have been horrified. Like, I don't understand. I don't see a world where we go back from this and we've kind of -- he has set this norm in a place that has caused the entire system to go towards him.

TAPPER: Right. Well, that's the thing. I mean, you have Rashida --

BASH: No, I think he gets away with things that people -- other people --

TAPPER: Well, except that it does seem as though that the lesson that the Democratic Party has learned from all this is like Rashida Tlaib holding up a sign that says, F ICE. Except it's not just the letter F.

Anyway, we're combing through President Trump's speech looking at what was effective and divisive. We're going to have much more of CNN's special coverage of the State of the Union address. Stay with us.

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