# A Guide to the State of Trump and the Union

An episode of [Big Take](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1578096201), 24 Feb 2026, 16 min.

Audio: https://podtrac.com/pts/redirect.mp3/tracking.swap.fm/track/UVBrz8bN8aM2Xe47PEPu/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/e73c998e-6e60-432f-8610-ae210140c5b1/825d4e29-b616-46f4-afd7-ae2b0013005c/37b4922c-b60d-493e-be6a-b3fb011a8399/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=8b1dd624-a026-43e9-8b57-ae2b00130066

President Trump heads into Tuesday evening’s State of the Union address with sagging poll numbers just days after his signature tariff strategy was struck down by the Supreme Court. As a speaker with a history of diverging from script, Trump is expected to defend everything from his record on affordability to his approach to Iran in order to rally his base ahead of midterm elections. On today’s Big Take Podcast, White House reporter Josh Wingrove joins host David Gura to discuss what this year-one milestone means for Trump amid tensions in the US and around the world. Read more: Trump to Make Economic Sales Pitch to Congress as Headwinds Grow Hosted by David Gura; Produced by Rachael Lewis-Krisky; Reported by Josh Wingrove; Edited by Naomi Shavin. Fact-checking by Eleanor Harrison-Dengate; Engineering by Alex Sugiura. Senior Producer: Naomi Shavin; Deputy Executive Producer: Julia Weaver. Executive Producer: Nicole Beemsterboer. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:02] Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
[0:09] Speaker 2: Tonight, President Donald Trump will deliver his first State of
[0:12] Speaker 2: the Union of his second term to a joint session
[0:14] Speaker 2: of Congress. Members of the Supreme Court are also usually
[0:18] Speaker 2: in the audience, and that will give President Trump an
[0:20] Speaker 2: opportunity to speak to them directly, just days after the
[0:24] Speaker 2: High Court decided to strike down a big part of
[0:26] Speaker 2: the President's tariff policy.
[0:28] Speaker 3: The Supreme Court's ruling on tariffs is deeply disappointing, and
[0:36] Speaker 3: I'm ashamed of certain members of the court, absolutely ashamed
[0:41] Speaker 3: for not having the courage to do what's right for
[0:43] Speaker 3: our country.
[0:45] Speaker 2: That was Trump reacting to the ruling on Friday. His
[0:48] Speaker 2: response has evolved since then. Most recently, he's pledged sweeping
[0:52] Speaker 2: global tariffs of fifteen percent using other legal justifications. It
[0:58] Speaker 2: is the fallout from the Supreme Court decisions, Breads Bloomberg.
[1:01] Speaker 2: White House reporter Josh Wingrove tells me it's expected to
[1:04] Speaker 2: dominate Trump's speech.
[1:06] Speaker 1: I think we're going to hear a lot about it.
[1:08] Speaker 1: I think that's that's what I'll start with. I think
[1:10] Speaker 1: he will talk, no doubt about the investment pledges that
[1:13] Speaker 1: have come in in his term, that he says, are
[1:17] Speaker 1: driving this golden knaves. Sort of the flip side of
[1:19] Speaker 1: that is that some of those are tied to trade deals,
[1:21] Speaker 1: and I have a lot of uncertainty around them.
[1:23] Speaker 2: But of course tariffs are not the only issue Trump
[1:26] Speaker 2: is likely to address. Josh says there's a lot on
[1:29] Speaker 2: Americans minds.
[1:31] Speaker 1: Voters want right now action on prices and immigration, in
[1:35] Speaker 1: particular after the killing of Alex Preddi and Rene Good
[1:37] Speaker 1: in Minneapolis.
[1:39] Speaker 2: Josh says those are subjects Trump may steer away from.
[1:42] Speaker 1: Trump likes to tell habitually, he likes to tell positive stories,
[1:45] Speaker 1: does not like to admit defeat, you know, in any case.
[1:48] Speaker 1: But there are warning sides flashing heading into the midterm
[1:51] Speaker 1: cycle here. Trump himself is really anxious to hold the
[1:54] Speaker 1: House because he thinks he's going to get impeached if
[1:57] Speaker 1: they don't. And so that's why the stakes I think
[1:59] Speaker 1: are pretty high for him personally and politically. And this one.
[2:07] Speaker 2: I'm David Gera, and this is the big take from
[2:09] Speaker 2: Bloomberg News Today on the show, how President Trump is
[2:12] Speaker 2: expected to use this state of the Union to rally
[2:15] Speaker 2: his party and what issues he's likely to address amid
[2:18] Speaker 2: lower approval numbers and tensions in the US and around
[2:21] Speaker 2: the world. President Trump was workshopping his State of the
[2:31] Speaker 2: Union last week in a speech he delivered at a
[2:34] Speaker 2: steel plant in Rome, Georgia.
[2:36] Speaker 3: We had record inflation. You don't have it anymore. I'm
[2:39] Speaker 3: going to make a State of the Union address on Tuesday.
[2:41] Speaker 3: I hope you're going to watch, and we're going to
[2:44] Speaker 3: be talking about it.
[2:45] Speaker 2: But Bloomberg's Josh Wingrove says the focus of the State
[2:48] Speaker 2: of the Union changed after the Supreme Court struck down
[2:51] Speaker 2: many of the tariffs President Trump had put in place.
[2:54] Speaker 1: Trump has been pressuring the court for months against this decision,
[2:58] Speaker 1: and he's sort of been tweeting through it, as we
[3:00] Speaker 1: all do, you know, from time to time in the
[3:02] Speaker 1: days since then, sort of riffing saying, oh, the court
[3:05] Speaker 1: actually gave me even more power than they intended in
[3:08] Speaker 1: other countries better not renege on their trade deals because
[3:12] Speaker 1: of this, or all go even bigger. But it's been
[3:15] Speaker 1: very chaotic. What that court ruling did was strike down
[3:19] Speaker 1: really the key leg of the stool of Trump's tariff policy,
[3:22] Speaker 1: the reciprocal tariffs on you know, basically every nation on Earth,
[3:26] Speaker 1: or at least many many, many of them, as well
[3:28] Speaker 1: as the fentanyl related tariffs on China, Canada and Mexico.
[3:31] Speaker 1: And Trump is trying to sort of rebuild Humpty Dumpy
[3:34] Speaker 1: through a different sort of series of authorities that you
[3:37] Speaker 1: know will take time, but it's been very ad hoc.
[3:40] Speaker 1: It's been unclear. Over the weekend, he announced that he
[3:43] Speaker 1: would increase a tariff from a level set not even
[3:46] Speaker 1: twenty four hours before, for instance, And so I think
[3:49] Speaker 1: we will hear him riff and probably rage about this ruling,
[3:53] Speaker 1: which he thinks really undercuts his authority. Of course, it
[3:56] Speaker 1: is a six to three conservative Supreme Court that ruled
[3:59] Speaker 1: six three against his interpretation of that, so he's wrong
[4:02] Speaker 1: in their eyes. But I think the question is what
[4:05] Speaker 1: is the follout of this? The European Union, for instance,
[4:08] Speaker 1: has moved to pause implementation of the trade deal as
[4:10] Speaker 1: this tariff chaos swirls. If you're the Canadians and Mexicans
[4:14] Speaker 1: waiting to renegotiate the USMCA trade deal, which is an
[4:17] Speaker 1: actual trade deal on the books in law, this probably
[4:21] Speaker 1: changes your calculus on it. If you are the Koreans
[4:24] Speaker 1: and Japanese who are on the hook for hundreds of
[4:25] Speaker 1: billions of dollars in financing and pledges. I think you
[4:28] Speaker 1: are looking at this landscape wondering whether you should change
[4:31] Speaker 1: tack a little bit or more than a little bit,
[4:34] Speaker 1: you know. So, I think Trump's sort of entire philosophy,
[4:36] Speaker 1: economic growth philosophy, is built on tariffs, both the sort
[4:40] Speaker 1: of leverage he gets from them and negotiations and the
[4:43] Speaker 1: domestic investment he believes that they drive. And so the
[4:46] Speaker 1: court ruling is going to hang over all of this,
[4:47] Speaker 1: so we will hear about it. Remember, Trump, of course,
[4:49] Speaker 1: often goes heavily offscript in speeches, and so that is
[4:52] Speaker 1: a real X factor hitting in to this evening is
[4:55] Speaker 1: how how much will we deviate from the prepared text.
[4:57] Speaker 1: You can almost always tell whether he doing it or not.
[5:00] Speaker 1: And I think when he goes off script, that's when
[5:02] Speaker 1: we're going to hear a lot about the tariffs.
[5:04] Speaker 2: So that'll be a big part of this. I imagine foreign
[5:06] Speaker 2: policy will be as well. And we have President Trump
[5:08] Speaker 2: at this moment of deciding whether or not to attack Iran.
[5:12] Speaker 2: What do we know at this point about what he's considering?
[5:14] Speaker 2: What the president's weighing.
[5:16] Speaker 1: Trump has acknowledged that these considering you know, a direct
[5:19] Speaker 1: intervention beyond where they've been before, in other words, more
[5:23] Speaker 1: than just sort of a one and done bombing run.
[5:26] Speaker 1: But it's hard to take what they're saying a face
[5:28] Speaker 1: value because since the previous strike, which of course Trump
[5:31] Speaker 1: insisted several different ways, completely decimated the Iranian nuclear capability,
[5:37] Speaker 1: of course, there are questions about whether that was actually
[5:39] Speaker 1: the case and whether Iran has the ability to sort
[5:43] Speaker 1: of restart things in a more quick way than President
[5:46] Speaker 1: Trump had stated after the last attack. Now, this is
[5:48] Speaker 1: one of the really sort of ongoing tensions in the
[5:51] Speaker 1: MAGA movement about whether you know, foreign interventions like this
[5:56] Speaker 1: are worth it. There is definitely an isolationist camp that
[5:59] Speaker 1: does not want to get bogged down in foreign complex
[6:02] Speaker 1: and Trump, on the flip side, often sort of quick
[6:04] Speaker 1: in and out type operations, as we of course saw
[6:07] Speaker 1: with Iran, but we saw with Venezuela as well. Now
[6:10] Speaker 1: Trump likes to sort of leave the dagger hanging a
[6:13] Speaker 1: little bit in these negotiations all the time, so it's
[6:16] Speaker 1: difficult to read one way or another. But right now
[6:19] Speaker 1: he's leaving a lot of options on the table, including
[6:22] Speaker 1: the direct American military involvement in Iran.
[6:25] Speaker 2: So that dagger is hanging, as you say, And then
[6:28] Speaker 2: you've got Steve Whitkoff, the President's close adviser, his son
[6:30] Speaker 2: in law, Jared Krishner, pursuing this diplomatic track as well.
[6:33] Speaker 2: Is it clear to you what the goals are on
[6:37] Speaker 2: that track, what those two men are trying to find
[6:40] Speaker 2: an agreement on, perhaps to forest all this military action.
[6:43] Speaker 1: I think Trump wants a deal of some kind. Beyond that,
[6:47] Speaker 1: it's not clear to me what they're willing to barter,
[6:49] Speaker 1: if anything, and what they're demanding, if anything. They've stopped
[6:53] Speaker 1: short of calling for outright regime change, or at least
[6:57] Speaker 1: Trump has and by the way, that is a back
[6:59] Speaker 1: to to the tariff discussion. As a backdrop to foreign affairs.
[7:04] Speaker 1: Trump thinks that he benefits from this chaos and from
[7:08] Speaker 1: this pique sort of will he or won't he uncertainty,
[7:13] Speaker 1: you know, that hangs over so much of his agenda.
[7:17] Speaker 2: This speech comes on the fourth anniversary of Russia's invasion
[7:19] Speaker 2: of Ukraine, and I'm curious what the White House is
[7:22] Speaker 2: indicated the President might say about that. Of course, that's
[7:25] Speaker 2: another diplomatic track that see Woodcoff is on right now,
[7:28] Speaker 2: trying to find some resolution to that conflict.
[7:30] Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump has been frustrated by the lack of a
[7:32] Speaker 1: resolution there, and occasionally sort of let slip that he
[7:35] Speaker 1: seems frustrated with Putin himself. Of course, Putin continues to
[7:38] Speaker 1: dangle the prospect or at least to Trump, dangle the
[7:41] Speaker 1: prospect of some kind of deal, well continuing and even
[7:44] Speaker 1: ramping up attacks both on the lines of battle in
[7:48] Speaker 1: Ukraine but also missile strikes on Ukrainian cities well behind
[7:51] Speaker 1: those lines. And so I think right now Trump has
[7:54] Speaker 1: been distancing himself from that conflict and distancing his political
[7:58] Speaker 1: sort of stake from whether there'll be a deal or
[8:01] Speaker 1: won't be a deal. And that's a big question mark
[8:03] Speaker 1: and concern for the Europeans broadly and Ukraine specifically as
[8:08] Speaker 1: to whether American arms shipments will continue at what level,
[8:11] Speaker 1: at what price, whether American pressure on Russia will continue
[8:16] Speaker 1: and with what fervor. And so if we hear mention
[8:19] Speaker 1: of it, I don't think we're going to hear a
[8:21] Speaker 1: fresh call. I've been wrong before, David, I expect to
[8:23] Speaker 1: be wrong, baby, But there's no sign that he's preparing
[8:27] Speaker 1: a fresh push. He seems to frankly on the flip side,
[8:31] Speaker 1: be tiring of the back and forth from it. Not
[8:34] Speaker 1: walking away entirely from trying to get a deal, but
[8:37] Speaker 1: more and more disinterested, he seems. In the to and fro.
[8:42] Speaker 2: Coming up, how Trump is expected to address affordability, the
[8:45] Speaker 2: latest economic data and the midterm elections. Josh, going back
[9:01] Speaker 2: to that speech the President gave in Rome, Georgia, he declared,
[9:04] Speaker 2: I've won affordability.
[9:06] Speaker 3: What word have you not heard over the last two weeks? Affordability?
[9:11] Speaker 3: Because I've won I've won affordability.
[9:14] Speaker 2: Is this the White House position now when it comes
[9:17] Speaker 2: to that issue of cost of living of affordability.
[9:19] Speaker 1: Yeah. So he's called affordability a hoax in the past,
[9:22] Speaker 1: and what he means by that is he thinks Democrats
[9:24] Speaker 1: are ginning it up as an issue beyond what voters feel.
[9:27] Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of evidence that, you know,
[9:29] Speaker 1: the truth is different, and that voters continue to feel
[9:33] Speaker 1: frustrated by not only ongoing price increases, but a lack
[9:37] Speaker 1: of disinflation and the decrease in prices that Trump had
[9:42] Speaker 1: sort of teased in particular on things like energy costs,
[9:44] Speaker 1: And so we will see him sort of take the
[9:46] Speaker 1: wins gasoline prices. Expect that to be discussed heavily throughout
[9:50] Speaker 1: this evening's speech. But I think, you know, he has
[9:53] Speaker 1: been trying to diffuse the issue that he of course
[9:57] Speaker 1: rode pretty heavily in the twenty twenty campaign of voter
[10:01] Speaker 1: outrage over price levels. So that continues to simmer. Poll
[10:04] Speaker 1: after poll shows it, and so I think that he
[10:07] Speaker 1: is trying to sort of argue his way out of
[10:10] Speaker 1: the box a little bit on it. But I think
[10:12] Speaker 1: we've just seen so much evidence that voters, including Republican voters,
[10:16] Speaker 1: continue to be pretty upset about this, and it of
[10:19] Speaker 1: course is difficult for the government to do much about it.
[10:22] Speaker 1: It's been a bit of deja vu for the White
[10:24] Speaker 1: House press corps watching Trump go after like the meat
[10:27] Speaker 1: packing conglomerates, for instance, because that is exactly what Joe
[10:31] Speaker 1: Biden tried to do when he was in exactly the
[10:33] Speaker 1: same position in his term and facing exactly the same
[10:36] Speaker 1: voter pressure of people being upset about it. So I
[10:40] Speaker 1: expect Trump to of course sweep a lot of that
[10:42] Speaker 1: under the Biden rugs, say this is a Biden problem,
[10:45] Speaker 1: We're fixing it, and just kind of go forward and
[10:48] Speaker 1: pray basically that the CPI prints continue to be not
[10:52] Speaker 1: that bad or even good. Dare I say and that
[10:54] Speaker 1: this will fade from voter's minds come November. But the
[10:57] Speaker 1: politics hanging over this are funny because Trump is really
[11:02] Speaker 1: pushing to cling to a majority because he thinks to
[11:04] Speaker 1: get impeached if he doesn't. But he's not really using
[11:07] Speaker 1: the majority he has right now for much, in part
[11:09] Speaker 1: because it's so small, in part because we're starting to
[11:11] Speaker 1: see Republican blowback on things like tariffs, and so he's
[11:16] Speaker 1: in a pickle.
[11:18] Speaker 2: Josh, let me ask you a bit more about how
[11:19] Speaker 2: he's approaching these midterms. So we've seen Democrats win some
[11:22] Speaker 2: seats in some key special elections in Texas and Louisiana.
[11:26] Speaker 2: I imagine those losses are leading to some nervousness among
[11:29] Speaker 2: among Republicans. What do we know about how President Trump
[11:32] Speaker 2: plans to support Republican candidates in these midterms, the kinds
[11:35] Speaker 2: of candidates he's setting out to support.
[11:39] Speaker 1: He said he's going to travel, but he hasn't really
[11:41] Speaker 1: followed through in it so much. And of course there
[11:44] Speaker 1: are some races where the party would love for him
[11:47] Speaker 1: to get involved. Texas jumps to mind on that where
[11:50] Speaker 1: there's a pretty duke it out primary going on for
[11:53] Speaker 1: the Senate race there that could help determine whether that
[11:56] Speaker 1: seat is more in play than it otherwise might be.
[12:00] Speaker 1: And so, you know, he continues to sort of demand
[12:02] Speaker 1: purity tests of Republican candidates, and if he doesn't get
[12:08] Speaker 1: what he wants, such as votes on tariffs, he is
[12:12] Speaker 1: very comfortable supporting a primary against a sitting lawmaker, even
[12:15] Speaker 1: if it raises the chance that Democrats flip that seat.
[12:18] Speaker 1: And so what is he going to do? Well, he
[12:20] Speaker 1: thinks that he's going to sort of put himself on
[12:22] Speaker 1: the ballot. That is what we've heard. Susie Wiles an
[12:24] Speaker 1: other signal publicly that Trump getting involved will help make
[12:28] Speaker 1: sure that Trump voters who tend to only go to
[12:30] Speaker 1: the polls for Trump bother to in a midterm when
[12:34] Speaker 1: he himself is not necessarily on the ballot. But Trump
[12:36] Speaker 1: getting involved, of course, has a two pronged effect, activating
[12:40] Speaker 1: both his biggest supporters and those people that either don't
[12:43] Speaker 1: like him or retiring of him. And so whether this
[12:45] Speaker 1: all works, and you know, we'll see, but you can
[12:48] Speaker 1: start to see some states lining up on the Senate
[12:50] Speaker 1: side where things can get Thorny in a hurry, and
[12:54] Speaker 1: you can start seeing how Democrats are feeling pretty confident
[12:56] Speaker 1: when they just need a handful of seats to flip
[12:58] Speaker 1: and they already take the majority.
[12:59] Speaker 2: In the Jeff, you've talked about economic policy and foreign policy.
[13:04] Speaker 2: You said one goal here for the president is not
[13:06] Speaker 2: to be impeached if he loses the majorities in the
[13:08] Speaker 2: House and Senate. Beyond that, what are the president's other
[13:12] Speaker 2: priorities here at this point in his second term. I
[13:14] Speaker 2: look at that Project twenty twenty five document from the
[13:16] Speaker 2: Heritage Foundation what it's called for, and it seems like
[13:19] Speaker 2: the president's done roughly half of what's in there. Do
[13:22] Speaker 2: we have a good sense of what's next on his
[13:24] Speaker 2: policy agenda?
[13:25] Speaker 1: I think the sense is fading because new battles are
[13:28] Speaker 1: cropping up. I'm thinking here, in particular of his recent
[13:31] Speaker 1: criticism of Leonard Leo and the broad sort of Republican
[13:35] Speaker 1: judicial establishment that has been so core to his confirmation
[13:39] Speaker 1: of three Supreme Court justices. He made a comment in
[13:42] Speaker 1: the last week or so that sort of acknowledge that
[13:44] Speaker 1: he doesn't expect more of that. By the way, that
[13:46] Speaker 1: neither Alido nor Thomas will retire in his term. You know,
[13:50] Speaker 1: it's difficult to continue enacting the agenda if the feuds
[13:54] Speaker 1: within your movement are starting to rise and Trump going
[13:57] Speaker 1: to battle with like the hardcore sort of legal establishment.
[14:02] Speaker 1: And it's not clear necessarily that he will fully do that,
[14:04] Speaker 1: but you know that is that is sort of a
[14:05] Speaker 1: warning sign that unity might be faded covering him. It
[14:08] Speaker 1: does seem like the sort of pre cooked meals that
[14:12] Speaker 1: were stacked in the freezer for day one or are
[14:14] Speaker 1: pretty empty now. They're sort of dealing with crises as
[14:17] Speaker 1: they come up. So I think he will continue to
[14:19] Speaker 1: try to do tariffs by executive action. He will continue
[14:22] Speaker 1: to try to codify things without Congress, and we'll see
[14:26] Speaker 1: him go abroad and try to strike deals, chiefly of course,
[14:30] Speaker 1: with that trip to China in April, where you know,
[14:33] Speaker 1: a lot of eyes will be on whether the Chinese
[14:35] Speaker 1: and Americans will extend the current sort of rolling deal
[14:38] Speaker 1: that they have right now, in particular because the Supreme
[14:41] Speaker 1: Court struck down a pretty big part of Trump's tariffs
[14:43] Speaker 1: on China. And so you know, he'll do what American
[14:46] Speaker 1: presidents do when they are approaching lame duck status, which
[14:49] Speaker 1: is use the tools you have, but the purity test
[14:54] Speaker 1: stuff and what he does with the money is a
[14:56] Speaker 1: big factor hanging over the entire Republican Party in particular
[14:59] Speaker 1: as they begin to move to the question of who
[15:01] Speaker 1: will be our flag bear in twenty twenty eight for
[15:03] Speaker 1: the Republican Party.
[15:10] Speaker 2: This is the Big Take from Bloomberg News. I'm David Gurat.
[15:13] Speaker 2: To get more from The Big Take and unlimited access
[15:15] Speaker 2: to all of Bloomberg dot Com, subscribe today at Bloomberg
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[15:27] Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. We'll be back tomorrow.

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