View in browser

Item one: The House speaker lived down to the moment

Joe Biden more than made it through Thursday night’s State of the Union address. That moment that his supporters always fear—the major brain fart, the confusing of Nikki Haley with Nancy Pelosi (oh wait, that was someone else)—never came. Not only did it not come, but most of the energy was dramatically positive. As is the morning-after conventional wisdom. Politico’s Playbook called it the "turn-the-tables SOTU," reporting that the Biden campaign’s best two hours of fundraising in this cycle were from 9 to 11 p.m. last night. A CNN flash poll found that 62 percent thought the policies Biden laid out would move the country in the right direction. 

He had his stumbles, and that Laken Riley moment was pretty cringey. But mostly he threw punches—and he landed almost all of them. As TNR’s Osita Nwanevu wrote: "That overall impression—of a vigorous president, strong enough to take the fight to his detractors⁠—will linger more deeply in the minds of most who watched than the substance of anything he said."

But let’s not talk about Biden. Let’s talk instead about that little guy in the chair over the president’s left shoulder. House Speaker Mike Johnson showed, in his histrionic facial expressions, everything that’s wrong and idiotic and dangerous and even treasonous about the Republican Party.

Johnson was ridiculous. He was small. Granted it’s not always easy for an opposition party leader to figure out how to comport him or herself during a State of the Union. The camera is on you for an hour or more, yet you can’t speak. You’re not going to join in on the frequent applauses, except rarely. Johnson did applaud Biden’s call for aid to Ukraine early in the speech, which he does seem to support personally, even though he’s too afraid of his wingnut caucus to allow a straight-up vote and thus may go down in history as the one person more than any other who handed Vladimir Putin the keys to Kyiv. So you sit there awkwardly.

Johnson decided that the State of the Union was the right time to mug for the camera. And he laid it on like a silent-movie actor so thick that you could practically see the girl tied on the railroad tracks and hear the piano music. He nodded and nodded—you know, that solemn, "more in anger than in sorrow" nod. And those eye rolls! He rolled his eyes more than a teenage girl listening to her father’s jokes (that’s an eye roll I know rather well).

And the things he rolled his eyes at! Most conspicuously, January 6. Here’s what Biden said: "We must be honest. The threat to democracy must be defended. My predecessor and some of you here seek to bury the truth about Jan. 6. I will not do that." That drew a sustained eye roll. So did a mention of abortion rights and freedom. So did the border bill, which Johnson helped kill because Donald Trump would rather have border chaos. 

Actually that one was more of a headshake, which went on a few seconds longer than it had any justification to. Mind you, he did that even as GOP Senator James Lankford, the chief negotiator on the border bill, listened to Biden lay out its provisions and nodded, clearly saying, "That’s true." They’ll be coming for him today, the sellout. Johnson also shook his head at "buy American." Seriously?!

And even this relatively nonpartisan sentiment drew an eye roll: "The very idea of America is that we are all created equal, deserve to be treated equally throughout our lives. We’ve never fully lived up to that idea, but we’ve never walked away from it either."

Once upon a time, those sentences would have elicited more than a smattering of bipartisan applause. There were plenty of Republicans who understood the nation as aspiring to its stated ideals. Even Ronald Reagan renewed the Voting Rights Act back in 1982, saying at the signing ceremony: "As I’ve said before, the right to vote is the crown jewel of American liberties, and we will not see its luster diminished." 

But today? This Republican Party doesn’t believe we’re all equal. This Republican Party, and specifically this speaker, thinks that if you’re not a right-wing Christian, you are not on some level a good American. Exaggeration? Johnson is tight with something called the National Association of Christian Lawmakers. Go inform yourself about some of what they’re up to.

It wasn’t just Johnson. It was Marjorie Taylor Greene in that ridiculous getup and MAGA hat, which was in apparent violation of House rules. It was Lindsey Graham sitting there with that embarrassed smile pasted on his face. It was the MAGA screamer in the gallery. It was Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s lame and all-over-the-place response—the only person who was popping champagne over that speech was Bobby Jindal, because it arguably moved him from worst State of the Union response of all time to second worst. It was the Republicans en masse sitting there dumbstruck time after time after time as this man who, according to the news channel they watch, can’t string two sentences together or remember his own middle name delivered zinger after zinger that laid bare to Americans the Republican Party’s extremism.

And that, in the end, is what was deft and unexpected about this speech. Biden drew contrasts on substance that showed how radical the Trump GOP has become on virtually every issue. November 5 is a long way away, and there will be bad days. But this night showed us something we haven’t seen hard evidence of in a while: how Joe Biden can win this election, and how the party and the speaker on the wrong side of history can lose it.

Item two: What did Nikki Haley accomplish?

Donald Trump, meanwhile? Well, he had a good week electorally, racking up all those Super Tuesday wins. And his last-standing opponent dropped out of the race. Nikki Haley did show us that roughly a quarter of Republican primary voters, maybe 30 percent, don’t want Trump. 

But will that hold? The usual thing is that primary voters come home in November. Remember, in 2016, Trump was getting far less of the vote than he is now. He was typically winning (in a multicandidate field) with 35, 40 percent of the vote. And he ended up winning 88 percent of Republicans—a little low by historical standards but still an indicator that the vast majority of GOP voters accept him as their candidate.

The 2020 numbers were more normal: Both Trump and Biden won the votes of 94 percent of their party members. So a big question this year is whether Trump will be closer to 94 or 88. Or even lower. We must, in fairness, ask the same question of Biden. If the Gaza war isn’t over by then, he’ll lose a lot of Democratic votes.

But the Biden disaffection is based on a specific and identifiable cause (and to some extent his age). The Trump disaffection is more generalized and thus could be enduring. This will also depend to a considerable extent on what Haley instructs her voters to do in November. If she tells them to stay home or leave the presidential line blank, some percentage of them will do it. The Democratic dream of course is that come the fall, Haley and Liz Cheney go on a joint Stop Trump tour. These kinds of things usually only happen in the movies, of course, but rationally, stopping Trump is Haley’s only play. Her only hope of having a future is that Trump loses, and loses badly enough that her crazy party takes some baby steps toward rejecting Trumpism. She might as well lean into that.

Join TNR at these upcoming events:

Item three: Deadlines for Donald

Meanwhile, Trump has some big deadlines coming. He has until next Monday to post the $83.3 million that New York jury awarded E. Jean Carroll. Trump, as he always does, asked the judge for a delay. No dice, sayeth the jurist. Including interest, Trump will owe $91.63 million. (Note: News broke late Friday morning that Trump posted this bond.)

Then, circle March 25. That’s the deadline for him to post the $454 million bond in the New York attorney general’s fraud case. Again, a Trump emergency stay request was denied. Interest accrues at the rate of about $115,000 a day. 

What happens if he can’t pay? Then the courts start to seize his assets. It’s not as exciting as him being perp-walked to the Tombs, I’ll grant you. But it’s going to be pretty humiliating all the same, especially if the courts determine he doesn’t have the assets to cover the bonds.

Quiz time!

Last week’s quiz: Ebony and ivory: a brief history of the keyboard 

1. It may be apocryphal, but it has long been said that this explorer discovered an early version of ice cream in his travels and brought it to Europe.

A. Ferdinand Magellan

B. Samuel de Champlain

C. Sir Francis Drake

D. Marco Polo

Answer: D, Marco Polo. See here. It’s not even clear he went to China! He did give his name to a fun swimming pool game though.

2. Several American Founders were fond of ice cream, but one Founder is most closely associated with it; he wrote down recipes (18 steps!) and served it frequently to dinner guests.

A. Thomas Jefferson

B. George Washington

C. Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

D. Elbridge Gerry

Answer: A, Jefferson. Here’s a recipe written in the hand of the man himself.

3. Something resembling ice cream cones existed among the ancients, and a version of a cone was made in England in the 1880s. But in what American city was the cone truly popularized for the first time in the early 1900s?

A. Chicago

B. St. Louis

C. Brooklyn (Coney Island)

D. Miami

Answer: B, St. Louis, at the famous 1904 World’s Fair. The purveyor, interestingly, was a Syrian American concessionaire. 

4. Which famous American chain introduced soft-serve ice cream in Kankakee, Illinois, in 1938?

A. Tastee-Freez

B. Carvel

C. Dairy Queen

D. Howard Johnson’s

Answer: C, Dairy Queen. Read about it here. I loved me some Dairy Queen when I was young—fascinating to see the man dip the ice cream into that butterscotch liquid and watch it freeze instantly.

5. Match the designer ice cream to its home base.

Answer: Ben and Jerry’s, Burlington; Jeni’s, Columbus; Moorenko, Silver Spring; Van Leeuwen, Brooklyn. Columbus, interestingly, is home to two upmarket ice creams, Jeni’s and Graeter’s.

6. In 2006, ice cream scientists (yep!) discovered that an item found in nature helped improve the flavor of low-fat ice cream because it prevented the formation of ice crystals. What was this substance?

A. A protein found in the blood of the ocean pout (fish)

B. A particular type of sugar compound found in maple tree sap

C. An acid found in the stomach linings of sheep

D. A liquid secreted by certain beetles

Answer: A, fish protein. Weird but true. 

This week’s quiz: March Madness: Yes, sports fans, it’s that time of year again. This is the week of the conference tournaments; Selection Sunday comes next week. This quiz about college basketball is, uh, quirky.

1. There is some debate about what constitutes the first-ever college basketball game, but in 1896, the University of Chicago played the University of Iowa in the first game with modern five-player lineups. What was the final score?

A. 9-3

B. 15-12

C. 23-23 (tie)

D. 27-9

2. What’s the most common nickname among teams in Division 1 sports?

A. Wildcats

B. Eagles

C. Bears

D. Tigers

3. On the other hand, there are some rather unusual nicknames among the 362 teams of Division 1 college basketball. Match the school to the name.

4. College basketball exploded as a national sport in the 1950s and 1960s, with the first generation of really great players who became the NBA’s first crop of superstars. Match the player to his alma mater.

5. What’s the most common uniform color scheme in Division 1 college basketball?

A. Blue and white

B. Blue and gold/yellow

C. Red and white

D. Red and black

6. What does Athlon Sports list as the biggest upset of all time in a championship game?

A. North Carolina State over Houston, 1983

B. Holy Cross over Oklahoma, 1947

C. Baylor over Gonzaga, 2021

D. Villanova over Georgetown, 1985

Hint: I was there! Charlie C., if you’re reading this, thank you again!  Answers next week. Feedback to fightingwords@tnr.com.

—Michael Tomasky, editor 

 Update your personal preferences for newsletter@newslettercollector.com by clicking here. 

Our mailing address is:

The New Republic, 1 Union Sq W , Fl 6 , NY , New York, NY 10003-3303, United States

Do you want to stop receiving all emails from Fighting Words? 

Unsubscribe from this list. If you stopped getting TNR emails, update your profile to resume receiving them.