Checkmate At SOTU: Trump Did What He Does Best 

President Trump’s State of the Union address last night went a whopping one hour and 48 minutes.

But the moments that mattered most happened when President Trump humiliated the Democrats.

Or more precisely, when they humiliated themselves.

The content of President Trump’s speech was not really the centerpiece of the night. President Trump, as I’ve said many, many times before, is a politician who does one thing very well and one thing not so well.

What he is great at doing is making it hard to vote for his political opponents. In fact, he makes it very hard to vote for his political opponents. He is excellent at shredding the people who face him down.

But when it comes to making himself more popular, that’s more challenging.

And so where Trump shines is in those moments when he can put in stark relief his own agenda and the agenda of the people who oppose him.

This is where Trump is simply masterful.

And last night, he did something I’ve never seen a president do before during a State of the Union address or really ever in a public address: He used the Democrats’ opposition to him, their anger at him, against them. He jiu-jitsued them in a masterful way.

President Trump knew for a fact that when he gave the State of the Union address, we would see the same spectacle we’ve seen before in years past. He would say something, Republicans would stand up and cheer, and Democrats would sit there and do nothing. They would sit on their hands at the very least.

In recent years, of course, Democrats have done more than that. Last year, during his State of the Union address, Democrats were dressed in white, color-coordinated to demonstrate that President Trump hated women or some such nonsense.

They yelled at President Trump from the gallery. They heckled him. They jeered at him. They did all the things that were unthinkable when we were growing up.

When representative Joe Wilson from South Carolina yelled, “You lie” at Barack Obama in 2009, it created a national firestorm. Now, we basically have people throwing rotten eggs at the president from the Democratic side of the aisle, and it’s considered perfectly normal.

But Trump knew what he was walking into. He knew how the Democrats would act — they would be incredibly performative, they would be obnoxious.

What he did was to take positions that are 80/20 positions. He said things that are easy to understand for the American people and that unify Americans.

And then he pointed at the Democrats over and over and over and said, why aren’t you clapping? Why aren’t you cheering? Why aren’t you standing up in unity?

Democrats hated George W. Bush, despised him. But when it came to the State of the Union address, they were politically savvy enough to understand that if George W. Bush said something that was generically good, they should stand up and clap.

They were politically savvy enough to understand that if the camera’s on you and the president says, “America is great,” you should probably stand up and clap, even if you don’t like that particular president.

Democrats have lost their minds thanks to Trump Derangement Syndrome, and so they have decided that it is more worthwhile for them to sit flat on their butts, while the president does unifying and obvious things.

Trump knew they were going to do this, and he decided to use that tactic against them.

This is where it helps that the President of the United States really understands TV. The president is a visual creature. He understands innately where to put cameras and how to light things. And if you’ve ever watched tape of the president in an interview, he will tell people in the room how to relight him from particular angles and where the camera should be placed for best effect.

He knew this was a great stage for him, and he also knew that the cameramen in the wings were going to be focusing on Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib, who made absolute fools of themselves last night.

If you’re the GOP looking for campaign ads, the president provided an enormous number of them for Republicans all across the country last night — as Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar screamed at him for saying baseline rational things, or as Democrats put on their sourest faces as he stated things such as “boys are not girls.”

Democrats sat there — while the president paid tribute to actual, honest-to-God American heroes — because they couldn’t bring themselves to stand up if President Trump so much as uttered their name.

The genius of what Trump did last night had very little to do with his policy discussion. Usually, the State of the Union address is a long list of policies, and it gets pretty boring. But last night, the president focused heavily on people in the gallery, which was smart because it allowed him to demonstrate that he is sympathetic toward human beings.

More importantly, it made Democrats look unsympathetic toward human beings.

If a Democratic president calls out an American hero in the wings, or somebody whose daughter was murdered, and pays homage to that person, it doesn’t matter if the president’s a Democrat — you get up and clap.

Obviously, Trump knew they weren’t going to do it. And so he played that for its full effect.

The shot over the bow from the president was when he overtly — in the middle of the speech — challenged the Democrats to stand in solidarity with Americans and not in solidarity with illegal immigration.

Democrats couldn’t bring themselves to do it.

Brilliant. Optically, it was a smart thing to do. Politically, it was a very smart thing to do.

Trump found the tool to use against the Democrats, and he used it over and over and over again. That is going to hurt Democrats. Because in the end, what people remember are moments when the nature of the opposition is made crystal-clear.

And no one, no one, does it better than Trump.