A real and effective opposition means fewer ping-pong paddles.

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State of the Union?

President Trump was invited to give a speech in front of a joint session of Congress (technically, not a State of the Union address since he’s only been in office for six weeks). In a record 1 hour, 40 minute-long speech, [1][2] Trump spent time detailing (at best) misstatements about what kind of “waste” his administration is eliminating.

The top two? First, Trump said:

“To further combat inflation, we will not only be reducing the cost of energy, but will be ending the flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars.
“And to that end I have created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency. DOGE! Perhaps you’ve heard of it, perhaps. Which is headed by Elon Musk, who is in the gallery tonight….
“Just listen to some of the appalling waste we have already identified:… $8 million for making mice transgender. This is real.” [3].

CNN fact-checked this claim as first being false, and after the Trump administration provided a list of contracts they said represented the $8 million Trump referenced, [4] CNN revised the fact-check, indicating that “[t]he studies were meant to figure out how these treatments might affect the health of humans who take them, not for the purpose of making mice transgender.” [5] Also, most of the money reference other studies that do mention “gender” or “transgenic” mice, which allow scientists to study the effects on humans through studies on mice, but nothing about “making mice transgender.”

Also, he claimed in the speech that “[w]e found hundreds of billions of dollars of fraud.” [6]. Well, that’s not quite right either. The DOGE website [7] claims “estimated savings” of $105 billion, although there is current litigation about whether the cancellation of these contracts is legal, [8] and DOGE’s numbers don’t even add up. The claim of $105 billion is only backed up via their “Wall of Receipts” with less than $9 billion of “savings.” In all, DOGE listed a total of 2,334 canceled contracts on its latest "Wall of Receipts," with the savings from those contracts amounting to $8.8 billion. [9]

The biggest claim during the President’s speech was his attack on Social Security, which seems intended to characterize the program as fraud-ridden – quite possibly as a false pretext to eliminate the program itself.

Trump said: “We’re also identifying shocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program for our seniors.” [10]

But these statements are false.

From NBC News reporting,

“Trump alleged in his speech that millions of senior citizens over age 100 — including some he maintained were older than 160 — were collecting Social Security checks, according to Social Security Administration data.
Trump specifically said that SSA records indicated that 4.7 million people 100 to 109 were getting checks, that 3.6 million 110 to 119 were, that 3.47 million 120 to 129 were, that 3.9 million 130 to 139 were, that 3.5 million 140 to 149 were, that 1.3 million 150 to 159 were — and that even 130,000 people older than 160 years old were still getting checks.
He also alleged that several hundred people older than 220 were still getting checks, according to SSA data — and that “one person is listed at 360 of age.”
The alleged fraud that Trump — and DOGE chief Elon Musk — have pointed to doesn’t exist. Rather, the numbers they refer to are products of a known problem with the government’s data.
There are millions of people over age 100 in the Social Security Administration’s database, but the vast majority aren’t receiving benefits.
Inspectors general at the agency have repeatedly identified the issue, but the Social Security Administration has argued that updating old records is costly and unnecessary.” [11]

In a February Oval Office discussion about these same allegations of Social Security fraud:

Justin Wolfers, a professor of public policy and economics at the University of Michigan, said it is "transparently obvious that he's misinterpreting or misrepresenting" the data but noted Musk is not "showing his work." [12]

I’m sure that if they actually had a 360 year-old person getting Social Security checks, we’d have seen the evidence by now. These are all unverified claims of fraud, intended to convince people that Social Security is a scam and worthy of elimination.

Where is the Real Opposition?

While the embarrassment coming from the administration continues, Democrats seem disorganized and adding to the embarrassment levels themselves.

At Trump’s Congressional address, Democrats brought… ping-pong paddles. [13]

To me, the ping pong paddles were goofy and weak sauce.

This time calls for a different response; there needs to be some out-of-the-box thinking to challenge Trump’s assault on the Constitution and the rule of law.

Yale historian Timothy Synder talks about a “shadow cabinet” [14] where the opposition party has a members assigned to provide the reasonable counterpoint to the administration’s words and deeds.

First of all, we have to be able to keep it positive, not in the sense of saying everything is great. It’s not. It’s terrible. They’re trying to break the government, which means breaking the country. But positive in the sense of we should have a shadow cabinet.
We should have a list of people, alternatives to these same people, so we can look and say, “Hey, this person could have been Secretary of the Treasury. That person could have been Secretary of Defense.” Have those people so that they can give positive alternatives as people. And give positive alternatives as policy.
But also to have someone so that the journalists can talk to them for the next four years. So that we don’t both-sides everything. So it’s not like “vaccines, plus minus”, but hey, lets talk to somebody about how good vaccines actually are and what we could actually do. Let talk to somebody about how we could prevent car crashes and what that would look like.
We have to think about opposition in the sense of what an America could look like... [15]

For example, with a significant measles outbreak in West Texas, killing two people already when there had been no measles deaths in the past decade, [16] who’s the Alt HHS Secretary who is advising the public to get vaccinated so that we don’t get - ya know - measles?

Who’s the Alt Attorney General that is standing up for the rule of law and against transactional corruption?

Who’s the Alt Defense Secretary who is stating that protecting our freedom at home means protecting democratic nations from aggression abroad?

Who’s the Alt Secretary of State that is standing arm-in-arm with our democratic allies to beat back authoritarian aggression, and continuing strong alliances with Canada and Mexico?

If we are relying on Democratic responses such as ping-pong paddles, America is in trouble. The message to Democrats: Organize differently, find some new leadership. The politics you’ve been using haven’t worked to date, so continuing them will not help.

Narratives

The book I’m reading or movie I’m watching

“Zero Day” - on Netflix

A former President of the United States is appointed to lead an investigation into a massive zero day cyberattack that causes multiple deaths and disasters nationwide. [17]

This six-episode Netflix limited series stars include Robert De Niro as the former President, Angela Bassett as the current President, Matthew Modine as the Speaker of the House, Joan Allen as De Niro’s character’s wife and a prospect for the federal bench, Connie Britton as the former President’s Chief of Staff, as well as other great performances by Lizzy Caplan, Jess Plemons, Bill Camp, Dan Stevens, and McKinley Belcher III.

GIF Game

Notes and Sources

[1] – “Trump sets record for longest address to joint session of Congress,” PBS News, March 4, 2025, https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/trump-sets-record-for-longest-address-to-joint-session-of-congress

[2] – “Length of State of the Union Addresses in Minutes (from 1964),” The American Presidency Project, University of California-Santa Barbara, retrieved March 9, 2025, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/presidential-documents-archive-guidebook/annual-messages-congress-the-state-the-union-0

[3] – “Donald Trump’s address to Congress, in full,” The Independent, March 5, 2025, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-congress-speech-transcript-address-b2709230.html

[4] – “Yes, Biden Spent Millions on Transgender Animal Experiments,” Press Release, The White House, March 5, 2025, https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-spent-millions-on-transgender-animal-experiments/

[5] – “Fact-checking Trump’s address to Congress,” CNN, updated March 5, 2025, https://edition.cnn.com/2025/03/04/politics/fact-check-trump-address-congress/index.html

[6] – “Trump’s address to Congress,” The Independent, March 5, 2025.

[7] - “Department of Government Efficiency,” retrieved March 9, 2025, https://doge.gov/savings

[8] – “Judge orders Trump administration to pay some USAid debts by Monday,” The Guardian, March 7, 2025, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/07/trump-usaid-debt-payments

[9] - Soo Rin Kim and Will Steakin, “DOGE says it's saved $105 billion, though it's backtracked on some of its earlier claims,” ABC News, March 4, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/US/doge-website-now-saved-105-billion-backtracked-earlier/story?id=119408347

[10] – “Trump’s address to Congress,” The Independent, March 5, 2025.

[11] - Adam Edelman and Jane C. Timm, “Fact-checking Trump's speech to Congress,” NBC News, March 5, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-speech-congress-rcna194819

[12] - Alexandra Hutzler, “Musk misreads Social Security data, millions of dead people not getting benefits, experts say,” ABC News, February 19, 2025, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/musk-misreads-social-security-data-millions-dead-people/story?id=118960821

[13] – Truthdig [@truthdig], Threads, March 5, 2025, https://www.threads.net/@truthdig/post/DG1I1ibNJoa

[14] – Timothy Snyder, “Shadow Cabinet,” Substack, January 6, 2025, https://snyder.substack.com/p/shadow-cabinet

[15] – “Timothy Snyder and Shadow Government,” Daily Kos, December 23, 2024, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/12/22/2293316/-Timothy-Snyder-and-Shadow-Government

[16] – Ana Faguy, “Second person dies in US measles outbreak,” BBC News, March 7, 2025, https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm2nzyjgrwxo

[17] – “Zero Day (American TV series),” Wikipedia, retrieved March 9, 2025, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Day_(American_TV_series)

Decisions with Mic Farris

Seek Truth. Honor Differences.

American Embarrassment - Part II