It was a tale of two speeches Tuesday night.
The first featured President Donald Trump, who delivered a lengthy and antagonistic campaign-style speech during a joint session of Congress.
It was followed by the Democratic Party rebuttal delivered by U.S. Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Holly). She countered with calm but stern remarks, pushing back on key points of the president’s address while seeking to assure the American people that the nation can do better than the policies the administration is pursuing.
“We just went through another fraught election season. Americans made it clear that prices are too high, and that the government needs to be more responsive to their needs,” Slotkin said Tuesday night. “America wants change, but there’s a responsible way to make change and a reckless way, and we can make that change without forgetting who we are as a country and as a democracy.”
Speaking from Wyandotte, Slotkin provided a mix of Democratic points on the economy, national security and American democracy along with key planks of her last campaign stump speech in her 10-minute rebuttal to the roughly 100-minute address by Trump before Congress.
Slotkin’s speech began after 11 p.m. eastern time. Trump’s speech was longest of its kind by a president to a joint session of Congress.
Trump began his address by declaring “America is back” which drew thunderous applause and cheers from GOP lawmakers contrasted by stone-faced silence from Democrats.
As the president began to take potshots at Democrats and his predecessor, former President Joe Biden, some Democrats began jeering Trump. After a warning from the U.S. House speaker to maintain decorum, a Texas Democratic U.S. House member was ejected for heckling the president.
Slotkin, by comparison, calmly but firmly laid into Trump’s economic policies by first noting Michigan’s place in history as leading in creating the nation’s middle class, saying more needs to be done to drive down costs for families on groceries, housing and health care.
Creating good paying jobs and strengthening domestic supply chains are also critical goals to improve people’s lives, she said.
Trump’s methods of doing so, from his moves to start a trade war with several countries including some of the United States’ largest trading partners and allies, to Elon Musk’s push to drastically slash government employees and spending, Slotkin said, are not the means in which to achieve these ends.
“Ther president talked a big game on the economy, but it’s always important to read the fine print,” Slotkin said. “Do his plans actually help Americans get ahead? Not even close.”
Slotkin said Trump’s economic plans would cut taxes for the wealthy on the backs of working-class and poorer people while raising prices on things such as groceries that were spoken about so much during the last election.
She also ripped the president’s imposing of tariffs on allies including Canada and Mexico effective earlier Tuesday, saying he has not laid out a credible plan to deal with the problems facing the nation.
“His tariffs on allies like Canada will raise prices on energy, lumber and cars and start a trade war that will hurt manufacturing and farmers,” Slotkin said. “Your premiums and prescriptions will cost more because the math on his proposals doesn’t work without going after your health care.”
Slotkin warned that the president’s economic policies could throw the nation into its first recession since the brief one that occurred during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, during the tail end of Trump’s first term in office.
Prior to her speech, Democrats provided their own form of protest after the early breaches of decorum and largely sat in icy silence, letting the president run through his speech.
Congressional Democrats, however, did silently protest by holding up signs throughout the president’s remarks, holding up signs with slogans including “Musk Steals” and “Save Medicaid.” Others held up signs saying “False,” a reference to what they considered a barrage of falsehoods uttered by the president.
U.S. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Detroit), who has drawn Trump’s ire since joining Congress, hoisted a small whiteboard throughout the speech, writing down phrases in real-time to hold up in response to parts of the president’s speech.
During one comment, Tlaib’s whiteboard stated: “That’s a LIE!”
At another point, when Musk was introduced and the president rattled off a string of budget line-items he classified as wasteful government spending, Tlaib’s whiteboard read “Cut Elon not Social Security.”
When the president began speaking about tax policy, Tlaib’s sign said: “Start by Paying Your Taxes.”
Trump at one point also took aim at the CHIPS Act, saying “your CHIPS Act is a horrible, horrible thing” before urging the revocation of the outstanding money from the Biden-era legislation and using it to pay down debt instead.
This could jeopardize at least one major project in Michigan. The state has been working to obtain CHIPS Act monies for a major proposed semiconductor facility in Mundy Township near Flint.
The state has already awarded $250 million in state economic development incentives for the proposed 1,300-acre site near Bishop International Airport (See Gongwer Michigan Report, June 26, 2024).
Slotkin in her speech later took aim at Musk. The senator questioned Trump’s sincerity in past statements that he will not touch social security, referencing Musk’s past comments calling the program “the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
From there, she tore into Musk, who has become a boogeyman among Democrats and opponents of the president for his slash-and-burn tactics in cutting government jobs and targeting huge swaths of line items within federal department budgets for elimination, which have already prompted numerous lawsuits and fierce protest from Democrats.
“While we’re on the subject of Elon Musk, is there anyone in America who is comfortable with him and his gang of 20-year-olds using their own computer servers to poke through your tax returns, your health information and your bank accounts?” Slotkin said. “No oversight, no protections against cyber attacks, no guardrails on what they do with your private data.”
Republican members of Congress gave Musk a huge ovation Tuesday night.
Slotkin said government waste can be addressed and should be, but not in the manner Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency has been undertaking.
“Change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe,” Slotkin said. “Mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing and conduct research that finds the cure for cancer, only to rehire them two days later? No CEO in America could do that without being summarily fired.”
On immigration, Slotkin also disputed the approach taken by the Trump administration of essentially seeking to drastically ramp up deportations.
“Securing our border without actually fixing out broken immigration system is dealing with the symptom and not the disease,” Slotkin said. “We need a functional system, key to the needs of our economy, that allows vetted people to come and work here legally.”
National security was where Slotkin, whose background includes working in the CIA as well as serving in roles in the administrations of former presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, criticized Trump the harshest.
She shredded Trump over his use of former President Ronald Reagan’s phrase “peace through strength” and took direct aim at his efforts to end the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Slotkin expressed disgust at his siding with Russian President Vladimir Putin. She also expressed dismay with incident last Friday in which Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance engaged in a heated exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office when they were on the verge of signing a deal to provide the U.S. access to the country’s rare earth minerals in exchange for continued provision of military support in its defense against Russia. The argument nixed the deal, at least temporarily.
“After the spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week, Reagan must be rolling in his grave,” Slotkin said. “We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity, and that scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV. It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world.”
Slotkin has had some critics on the left. Former Rep. Abraham Aiyash of Hamtramck in a post to social media, without naming Slotkin, said touting Reagan may not be wise considering how Republican Liz Cheney campaigning in Michigan was no help to former Vice President Kamala Harris.
Slotkin accused Trump of cozying up to dictators like Putin and knocking down allies like Canada while treating American leadership like a string of real estate transactions.
It was at that point Slotkin took her most significant dig at Trump.
“I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s,” Slotkin said. “Trump would have lost us the Cold War.”
Slotkin finished by urging Americans to be actively involved in the political process and to hold their elected leaders accountable, Republicans and Democrats alike.
She also sought to tell the American people that times are tough, but the nation has persevered in the past and will do so again despite concerns by those upset over the current political climate.
“We’ve gone through periods of political instability before, and ultimately, we’ve chosen to keep changing this country for the better, but every single time, we’ve only gotten through those moments because of two things: engaged citizens and principled leaders,” Slotkin said.
As Trump’s remarks concluded and Slotkin’s rebuttal was minutes from beginning, a CBS anchor set the table for the transition between the two.
“How’d you like to be Elissa Slotkin tonight?” the CBS anchor said.
– By Nick Smith
