The Democrats topped off their rough PR night on Tuesday with one of the worst, most incoherent rebuttals to a president’s speech to a joint session of Congress in recent memory.
The Democrats’ antics during President Donald Trump’s address included one lawmaker refusing to sit down and keep quiet, while others waved silly signs. And the Democrats could not even bring themselves to applaud a 13-year-old cancer patient being honored by the president. It was a shameful display.
Freshman Sen. Elissa Slotkin was given the task of making the Democrats’ case after Trump spoke, probably because she was perceived as the more moderate among the bunch, given her win in Michigan in November, a state the president carried in his seven swing-state sweep.
First, it should be noted that Slotkin cannot be held up as some kind of profile in courage because she conveniently did not vote on Monday for legislation to keep men out of women’s sports. That’s a bill that all her Democratic colleagues voted against advancing, despite the American people overwhelmingly supporting it by approximately 80 to 20 percent.
Democrat Senator Elissa Slotkin says to hold your elected officials accountable and watch how they’re voting.
Hey @SenatorSlotkin, why did you not vote yesterday to protect women and girls from being beat up by men in female sports??? pic.twitter.com/qwGLiwHHyU
— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 5, 2025
Slotkin delivered her 10-minute rebuttal Tuesday night in a polished enough manner; the problem was with the content of what she said.
The senator started out fine by giving her curriculum vitae as a former CIA officer who did three tours in Iraq and joined the agency in response to the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In other words, no one can gainsay her patriotism.
But soon thereafter is when her rebuttal went off the rails.
Did you watch Trump’s speech?
Yes: 90% (584 Votes)
No: 10% (68 Votes)
“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,” Slotkin said.
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So the senator then tried to make the argument that Trump is being reckless in his policies. You mean like closing down the border and removing criminal illegal aliens? How about his executive order keeping men out of women’s sports? Opening up federal land again to more oil and gas exploration, so the price of most everything comes down? Ending the war in Ukraine? Or rooting out waste and fraud in government?
These are all issues the American people support by overwhelming numbers.
CBS News/YouGov Poll – After Trump’s Speech
– 77% support his plan to cut government waste and spending
– 77% back his immigration and border policies
– 76% approve of Trump’s speech
– 76% approve of removing congressmen who interrupted his speech
– 74% say his speech was… pic.twitter.com/pSOt7R12Ob— Libs of TikTok (@libsoftiktok) March 5, 2025
“While we’re on the subject of Elon Musk,” Slotkin said, “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 you tax returns, your health information, and your bank accounts? No oversight.”
Actually, a poll conducted by CBS/YouGov following Trump’s speech said that 77 percent of respondents support the work of cutting government waste and spending, which is the task Trump has assigned to the newly created Department of Government Efficiency that Musk oversees.
Just a few sentences before attacking Musk, Slotkin highlighted the danger of our national debt hitting over $36 trillion. Well, how else is the U.S. going to to address the issue without cutting government spending and waste? That’s how the federal government enjoyed a surplus in the late 1990s — by cutting spending and growing the economy, the two pillars of Trump’s plan.
Slotkin decried the “chaotic” firing of federal workers.
Well, Democratic President Bill Clinton let go of hundreds of thousands of federal employees while working with the Republican Congress to achieve budget surpluses.
There was no outcry, no complaining when President Bill Clinton shrank the Government and fired 337, 000 federal workers!
Remember that! pic.twitter.com/pwCOeMqfMh
— James Pleickhardt (@JamesPleickhar2) March 3, 2025
Slotkin went on to contend that the U.S. cannot secure the border without “fixing our broken immigration system.”
That’s a years-old Democratic talking point that turns out not to be true. February saw the lowest number of illegal border crossings in recorded U.S. history, just 8,300.
As Trump said in his Tuesday speech, “The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation … to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president.”
POTUS: The media and our friends in the Democratic Party kept saying we needed new legislation to secure the border.
But it turns out all we really needed was a new President! pic.twitter.com/EkQk65CrV7
— Rapid Response 47 (@RapidResponse47) March 5, 2025
Slotkin also chastised Trump for the “spectacle that just took place in the Oval Office last week” when Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy tried to renegotiate, in front of the U.S. media, the minerals agreement he had already agreed to sign.
She contended that Trump was not displaying “peace through strength” and that “Ronald Reagan must be rolling in his grave.”
“Trump would have lost us the Cold War,” Slotkin claimed.
Well, she obviously forgot that Reagan walked away from the Reykjavík Summit in 1986 when then Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev demanded the U.S. give up its Strategic Defense Initiative (anti-missile defense program) in exchange for a nuclear arms reduction agreement.
In 1987, Gorbachev came to the U.S. and signed a nuclear arms reduction treaty, and the U.S. kept developing SDI.
One of the key lessons of being a good negotiator: You have to be willing to walk away rather than accept a bad deal.
FYI, to the Democrat response to Trump‘s fabulous uplifting speech tonight. Trump would not have lost the Cold War. You must remember the Democrats didn’t like the tear down this wall speech. They also didn’t like my father calling the Soviet Union, the evil empire, and they were…
— Michael Reagan (@ReaganWorld) March 5, 2025
By the way, Zelenskyy posted on Tuesday on X that he’s now ready to sign the agreement.
One of the oddest parts of Slotkin’s rebuttal is charging that Trump doesn’t think the U.S. is an “exceptional nation.” He’s said it is on many occasions, and his whole campaign slogan was “Make America Great Again.”
In his speech at Mount Rushmore on July 4, 2020, he said, “We declare that the United States of America is the most just and exceptional nation ever to exist on Earth.”
She then closed on the old saw from the 2024 campaign that the GOP president is a threat to democracy.
That was litigated by the American people last year, and they returned Trump to office in overwhelming numbers because they recognized Democrats were the real threat to democracy by seeking to jail their chief political rival and imprison and censor his supporters.
Trump definitely won the night, and Slotkin’s rebuttal did not help the Democrats’ cause.
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