Will SOTU Matter?

It’s a big night in politics – or is it?

Tonight is President Trump’s first State of the Union of his second term. (In 2025, he actually delivered an address to a Joint Session of Congress in March, and not technically a SOTU address, though it had the feel of one.)

And the question on everyone’s mind is, will this matter? Can or will Trump say anything that will impact midterms? Besides the fact that it will definitely be long, and there will definitely be viral moments ripe for clipping, will it change the trajectory for Republicans?

I don’t think so – and there are a bunch of reasons why.

SOTU isn’t the same as it used to be.

For starters, there’s always a lot of pomp and circumstance around any President’s State of the Union address. It’s (usually) attended by every member of the Supreme Court, every lawmaker (save the designated survivor), special guests, cabinet members. And every network will air it and do their big-panel, important-music coverage around it.

So it feels like a big deal. But SOTU hasn’t been a big deal for a while now. Viewership has gone from a high point in 1993, with Bill Clinton’s first address bringing in nearly 67 million viewers, and George W. Bush’s in 2003, which brought in 60 million, to about half that in recent years. Joe Biden’s last SOTUs earned only 32 million in 2024, and just 27 million in 2023. Trump’s last one in 2020 brought in 37 million.

Now that’s a lot of people tuning in…but when you compare it to other events, SOTU isn’t even close.

650 million people tuned in to see the Apollo moon landing.

2.5 billion people watched Princess Diana’s funeral.

127 million people watched Super Bowl LIX in 2025.

The Seinfeld finale brought in three times the amount of viewers as the last SOTU.

In addition to viewership, SOTU’s also lost a lot of its heft. Thanks to social media and regularly televised press conferences, it’s no longer one of the only opportunities for the President to address the nation. That’s especially true of this president, whose social media presence and camera-hogging love of attention makes him feel ubiquitous. People tuning in tonight aren’t likely there for any new policy announcements but for the “show.”

It’s Not a Trump Rally.

Trump usually gets a lot of momentum from his rallies, where rooms packed full of supporters give him and the television viewing public the impression that he is universally beloved. Of course, he is not, and there will be a lot of dissension on display in the Capitol building tonight.

From the Democratic lawmakers who aren’t attending, to the ones who are attending and will show their disdain through jeers and boos, to the carefully chosen invited guests meant to make a statement of protest against Trump and his administration, the opposition to him and Republicans will be in the spotlight. And a room that’s as deeply divided as this one will not give the impression that America is united behind this president and his agenda. Because it isn’t. If Trump were going to give Republicans the gift of momentum, it’s not happening in this kind of environment tonight.

It’s Too Late.

The biggest reason, though, that tonight’s SOTU will not help Republicans in the midterms is the calendar. It’s simply too late to crawl out of the hole that Trump has put Republicans in.

I spoke to former NY Congressman Steve Israel not long ago, and in addition to being a congressman who won all of his elections, he also chaired the DCCC, so he knows all about midterm election year math. I asked him when voters start deciding how they will vote in midterms – because it’s different than presidential years.

And he said it wasn’t the month before the election, or two months before the election, or three. It was the holidays before the election. That’s, according to him, when voter sentiment really solidifies.

It makes sense – voters are holiday shopping and holiday traveling, which means they’re feeling the effects of the economy acutely, whether for good or bad. And many have time off work and school and may be taking in more news and politics, and they’re certainly talking about it more with family.

If you think back to what was happening around the holidays this past November, December and January, it is a laundry list of bad stories for Trump and Republicans.

There were the drug boat strikes, which many voters found confusing and maybe unconstitutional.

There was the killing of Renee Good in Minneapolis, and the awful images that we all saw.

There was the toppling of Maduro in Venezuela, which many voters saw and thought, “Huh? I thought we weren’t doing regime change anymore?”

There was more bad economic news as Trump tried to push his tariffs to the brink, which only made the cost of goods and the cost of doing business go up. His $12 billion bailout of farmers in December highlighted just how punitive and damaging they’ve really been.

At the same time, voters were learning about Trump’s new gold-leaf ballroom and the Arc de Trump monument he’s building.

Then there was the killing of Alex Pretti, a second death in Minnesota at the hands of Trump’s ICE deportation force. The cruelty of the administration around the two killings of US protesters was so politically disastrous for Republicans that Trump had to pull out.

Then there was Trump’s embarrassing Greenland folly, which he also had to abandon in utter defeat, and his insane DAVOS speech that humiliated Trump and America on the world stage.

Hanging over all of this are the Epstein Files, and the way Trump and his DOJ have tried to cover them up, which brought left and right together in disgust. As long as Trump tries to keep them buried, they will hang over Republicans like an albatross.

If Steve Israel is right, none of these things endeared voters to Republicans over the holidays, and if they did indeed cement their mood, it’s safe to say November will be very very bad for the party in charge.

Even pretending Trump cared about this, there would be little he could do in an hour-and-a-half long speech tonight to undo all of that damage. But he doesn’t care about midterm elections, the health of the Republican party, or even keeping the majority. So he won’t say anything that might help calm or relieve voters about the state of the union – rather, he’s likely to drive them deeper into their uneasy feelings about the economy, the competence of the president and his administration, and what the next two years are going to look like.

We always say that a week is a lifetime in politics – and that’s true, anything can and does happen. But it’s also true that once the cake is baked, it can’t be unbaked. And thanks to Trump’s utter lack of focus on the things that matter to voters – including his own voters – the 2026 cake feels baked to me.

But it will be a spectacle. So get out the popcorn and watch for the show.