Reflections on the SOTU

State of the Union 2026

 It has been a very wild week in terms of news.

I took yesterday to reflect on the State of the Union Address. It is hard with a speech that long to really grasp the salient points. I also got caught up a bit in the theatrics of the event and needed time to cool-off from the inaccuracies which were presented. 

I found a good source to Fact Check the statements of the speech. It is FactCheck.Org and Trump's 2026 State of the Union address has a lot of incorrect facts. 

I watched competing news channels yesterday to get a sense of the Right vs Left view of the speech. What i discovered was especially disturbing. 

While the Left-leaning networks were discussing the facts and the policy initiatives, the Right-leaning ignored the inaccuracies and the bad facts to focus on the Democrats and their responses to the speech. Neither side hailed the speech as a positive roadmap for the future of America and there was general disagreement with the actual State of the Union!

A lot of discussion on both sides was about the incendiary statement made by Trump:

The first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens (Trump SOTU, February 24, 2026)

Wow, this statement has been so misquoted that I was glad to have seen and heard personally. 

Trump called on those who believed this statement to be true to stand. All the republicans stood, none of the democrats stood. The statement was a calculated set-up because it is not true! All those who stood are ignorant of the Constitution.

What is the duty of the American government? It is clearly defined in the Preamble of the Constitution:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. (The Constitution)

So what is the State of the Union? 

Divided. 

-- Bob Doan, Tequesta, FL