Greg Olear has a plan for Democrats tonight at the State of the Union.

Here it is:

Tonight, at 9 pm Eastern Time—which is to say, 5 am Wednesday Moscow Time—Co-President Trump will deliver the first State of the Union Address of the Redux. Congressional Democrats must protest this speech like the fate of the nation depends on it—because it does.

The time for traditional party politics has passed. No more “norms.” No more butter knives to gunfights. No more tone-deaf tweets. No more pathetic capitulation. No more infuriating appeals for donations from what’s left of Kamala Harris’s team. We cannot allow Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, the anonymous new DNC chair, and the husk of Joe Biden to Merrick Garland our democracy into oblivion.

The Dems must become a true opposition party. Now. Today. A true opposition party recognizes that the real enemy of the people is sitting in the Oval Office, watching a little kid wipe boogers on the Resolute Desk. Since January 20th, Trump and Co-President Elon Musk have quickly consolidated power, causing all sorts of chaos and pain. This will continue until they have transformed this country into the Russian-style oligarchy of their despotic dreams. 

They. Want. To. Hurt. Us. And we must stop them. All of us.

The nation is in urgent need of Washington generals—and not the kind who get beat up every night by the Harlem Globetrotters. Kamala Harris must snap out of her post-election funk and reboot the Joyous Warrior. Barack Obama must step away from his Hollywood party circuit and get his manicured hands dirty; Michelle Obama hates this crap, and I don’t blame her, but we need her help now. George W. Bush needs to put down the paintbrush and take up the mantle. Bill and Hillary need to come to the front. Mitt Romney? This ain’t the moment for dressage. Step away from your Dutch warmblood, mount the Warhorse, and ride in with the cavalry. 

Since Election Day, the Democrats as a party have been rudderless, weak, and frustratingly out of touch. Chuck Schumer, Hakeem Jeffries, and the party leadership have been slow to recognize the threat. Hint: look at what Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jasmine Crockett have been doing, and do that! Or better yet, step down and put them in charge! If the Dems can’t sort this out, and fast, to hell with them. If we have to galvanize behind Liz Cheney, fine, great, let’s do it. We can bicker about policy positions and party planks after the dragon is slain. Right now, we need a leader who isn’t a pusillanimous piece of shit.

On Monday, AOC asked:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @aoc.bsky.social

If you were in Congress, what would you do for the State of the Union? What do you think Dems should do?

Fri, 28 Feb 2025 21:37:17 GMT

View on Bluesky

Here is my answer:

All members of Congress who oppose Trump—Democrats, Independents, and whatever Republicans haven’t capitulated—should come to the Capitol at the appointed time. They should have with them a laminated print of that infamous photo from Helsinki, where Trump follows behind Putin subserviently. They should tape the photo to the back of the chair. And as soon as Trump begins to speak, they should all walk noisily out, so that the cameras pan to empty chairs and scores of copies of that embarrassing photo. I wouldn’t object to a crisp “Pu-tin sucks!” chant.

Then, every member of Congress who opposes Trump should repair to his or her office and do a livestream, giving the same speech: a real State of the Union (or State of the Oblast, as it were). This way, every single opposition leader is doing must-see counter-programming simultaneously, to drown out Donald’s hateful lies.

This is what I think they should say:

My fellow Americans, good evening.

What is the state of the Union? Co-President Donald Trump will tell you the state of the Union is strong, but he’s lying, as usual.

Unlike Trump, I’m not going to lie to you. The state of the Union is precarious. It’s precarious and it’s perilous. We are hanging on by a thread. Our democracy is on life support—and Co-President Elon Musk wants to pull the plug and call it “efficiency.”

The Trump/Musk agenda represents a clear and present danger to the people of this country. This threat transcends party politics—like 9/11, like the JFK assassination, like Pearl Harbor. I am speaking to you now not as a Democrat, but as a member of the opposition.

I oppose cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security. 

I oppose the suicidal tariff war Donald has begun with our neighbors, Canada and Mexico.

I oppose the country descending into dictatorship.

I oppose an unelected, unconfirmed South African weirdo—who can’t be bothered to take off his baseball cap while presiding at their first Cabinet meeting—being granted godlike powers to cut funding, kill programs, and fire hardworking Americans—all at the whim of some half-ass algorithm slapped together by the teenage boys who comprise the workforce at the illegal shadow operation he calls DOGE.

I oppose rudeness, cruelty, and lack of respect.

Above all, I oppose the new world order Donald and Elon have created, where they do whatever they can to help that butcher and war criminal, Vladimir Putin.

My fellow Americans, this is the greatest country on earth—the greatest country that ever existed. And I refuse to allow the United States of America to turn into a vassal state of the Russian Empire. The occupant of the White House should be the Leader of the Free World, not some third-rate tyrant’s sidekick.

Donald has consistently denied his long ties to the Kremlin. “Russia Russia Russia,” he says mockingly, whenever some new revelation comes out about something involving him and Moscow. He has ridiculed anyone who suggests he is Putin’s puppet—as Hillary Clinton did, you may recall, in that debate back in 2016, right around the time the U.S. Intelligence Community warned that the Kremlin was attempting to interfere in the election on Trump’s behalf. Later, in Helsinki, Trump would side with Putin over our intelligence professionals!

He claims the Mueller investigation was a “witch hunt.” Same with Volume 5 of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s Report on Russian Interference in the 2016 Presidential Election. Even Marco Rubio, Trump’s groveling Secretary of State, signed off on that, admitting the Trump/Russia relationship. It wasn’t a witch hunt, you see. Donald doeshave lots of ties to the Kremlin. And, as he made abundantly clear in Friday’s Oval Office debacle, he is indeed Putin’s puppet.

Putin’s puppet: That sounds like the sort of insult Donald likes to hurl as his opponents, but I don’t mean it as an insult. I mean it as a statement of fact. Trump has thrown in with Putin. He has taken up Moscow’s position regarding the invasion of Ukraine. He has parroted Kremlin talking points about President Zelenskyy.

You don’t have to believe me; you can look it up yourself. This is why so many people were so upset about the abhorrent way Donald and JD behaved at that meeting. People know: that’s not how American leaders are supposed to act!

On Friday, Donald told President Zelenskyy that he didn’t have the cards to play. When he said that, he put his own cards on the table. And now, incredibly, the United States of America is overtly, eagerly sucking up to Moscow. Why? So Co-President Elon Musk and the other new American oligarchs can make even more money—by stealing it from you and me.

Putin regards the United States as an enemy of Russia—as he should. Because he’s certainly our enemy—even if a lot of Americans haven’t quite realized it.

We are now finding out what it means when the President and Co-President are Putin’s puppets. Donald and Elon are charting the course the Kremlin wants for America. They want us broke. They want us sick. They want us stupid. They want us fighting each other. And they want us to leave the rest of the world alone.

Over the first two months of his second term, Donald and Co-President Musk have worked hard to give their whoremaster Vladimir Putin what he wants. So has Speaker Johnson, most of the Republicans in Congress, and the entire Trump Cabinet.

Let me explain what that means, in real terms.

They want us broke. That means they want a recession, a depression, economic tumult. They want mass unemployment. They want the stock market to collapse. They want us to go broke struggling to pay our bills. Have you read the contents of the austerity budget Speaker Johnson wants to pass? Trump and Musk will cut $2 trillion from things like Medicare, Medicaid, SNAP, and other social welfare programs that Americans of allpolitical persuasions depend on. This will be to pay for tax cuts—which aren’t really tax cuts, because the American oligarch class doesn’t pay taxes like you and me. This is going to be mass theft on the grandest possible scale. This is stealing. You’ve heard of robbing Peter to pay Paul? This is robbing Grandma to pay Elon. The result of this will be financial hardship for most Americans—just what Putin wants.

They want us sick. There is a measles epidemic now in Texas. It’s spreading. This is the result of a massive, decades-old Kremlin disinformation campaign around vaccines. RFK, Jr., who has done more to push this Kremlin lie than any other person on earth, is now in charge of our national health systems. He’s antivax. You know who isn’t antivax? Putin. Putin and Rupert Murdoch, who owns Fox News and the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal, love their vaccines. Rupert was one of the first people on earth to get the covid vaccine. They know vaccines work—but they want you to think they don’t. RFK also wants to cut funding for cancer research and pandemic preparedness. He wants to get rid of SSRIs, which are incredible drugs that help millions of Americans who struggle with their mental health. Why? Because RFK’s job is to make us all sick—which is what Putin wants.

They want us stupid. Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. Let me say that again: Donald put the Department of Education in the hands of the head of a professional wrestling organization. And she’s going to cut funding, if not kill the department entirely. They say they want to empower the states to decide how our children are being educated, but that’s just the cover story. All this will do is make our schools exponentially worse. Which is what Putin wants—it doesn’t help Russia if Americans are inventing things, and bringing new technology to the world.

They want us fighting each other, and they want us isolated from the rest of the world. Pete Hegseth, the drunken Fox News host who is somehow our Secretary of Defense, ordered Cyber Command to stand down its defenses against Russia. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin? Tulsi Gabbard ordered mass firings at the NSA, our largest and most important intelligence gathering agency. Why would she do that, if not to please Putin? JD Vance, the pompous imbecile who is a heartbeat away from the presidency, is on an anti-diplomacy tour, insulting all of our longtime allies—the leaders of Western democracies. Why would he do that, if not to please Putin?

This is what it looks like when a Kremlin puppet dictator is in the White House. This is why Hillary Clinton, and James Comey, and James Clapper, and Christopher Steele, and Pete Strzok, and Adam Schiff, and Nancy Pelosi, and Bob Mueller, and Jack Smith worked so hard to expose Donald Trump for what he is.

The message failed. The warning was ignored. And what is happening now, right now, is the result. The chaos, the cruelty, the ignorance, the rudeness, the lack of fundamental human decency, the fear and dread—that is the result.

We have Putin puppets in charge of our country. We are being led by full-on traitors: Donald Trump and Elon Musk, JD Vance and Mike Johnson.

None of those people care about you or your family; if they did, they would occasionally do something to help you. None of them care about what’s good for the United States; if they did, they wouldn’t be trying to burn it down. And none of them care about democracy; if they did, they would not be establishing a Trump/Musk dictatorship, modeled on the philosophy of the Unabomber. I’m not kidding—read the Unabomber Manifesto!

Maybe you think I’m crazy. Maybe you don’t believe me. Maybe you think I’m just trying to score cheap political points. Sooner or later—sooner, probably—it will become obvious to even the most zealous Trump supporter: Change is coming, my friends, and unless you’re one of the new oligarchs, you’re not going to like it.

Ignore me at your peril. Peril. Peril.

The state of the Union is perilous. And we must recognize the threat, and oppose it with every fiber of our beings, and with every means at our disposal. If we don’t, we will dishonor the memory of Abraham Lincoln. If we don’t, a government of the people, by the people, and for the people shall indeed perish from the earth.

God bless you, and God save America.

…or something to that effect. These motherfuckers have all but announced their plans to steal our Social Security. If you can’t message on that, hang up the spikes.

Or, if the Dems can’t manage something so sophisticated, offer an alternate broadcast—Manning Cam, but for the State of the Union. Have AOC and Jasmine live-stream themselves watching the SOTU, so they can fact-check and mock Donald while he’s speaking. I would certainly watch that.

And as for the rest of us? The course is clear: DON’T WATCH THE SOTU. Deny Donald the ratings he desperately craves.

If the Dems don’t offer suitable counter-programming, I’ve set my State of the Oblast speech to run tonight at 9 pm ET:

Or, if you prefer to ignore the whole shit-show—I don’t blame you!—turn on the telly and flip to TNT, where there’s an NBA doubleheader beginning at 7:30: First, Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors are at Madison Square Garden to take on Jalen Brunson and the New York Knicks. (Go, New York, go, New York, go!) And then, the L.A. Clippers are in Phoenix to play Kevin Durant and the Suns. Remember: keeping the television tuned to a different station hurts Donald’s precious ratings.

There it is. Those are my proposals. 

And if we see clips of Jeffries and Schumer and the others just sitting there as Trump rants and raves, looking solemn, clapping softly, normalizing the fascist takeover, we know damned well what that means: craven, cowardly, poltroonish surrender, of the most shameful kind, before the fight has even really begun.

Then we’ll know for sure the Democrats, like the Republicans, are dead as a political party.

Then it will be clear: we’re on our own.