By Bob Rae

February 25, 2026

In a performance that clocked in at just under two hours on Tuesday night, Donald Trump turned the State of the Union address into an awards show — “You get a medal!”, “You get a medal!”…he even bemoaned not being able to award himself the Medal of Honor.

Those who only read the transcript may miss the point that this was a spectacle with heroes (“warriors”) and villains (Democrats and judges) that had more standing ovations than a 1930s Stalin rally.

As a performance, it was probably successful in shoring up his base. For the most part, Trump read his speech well, the Mussolini chin jut was in good working order, and he turned the night into a trial run for the narrative and rhetoric that will dominate the airwaves until the midterm elections in November.

That narrative is not pretty.

As the story goes, the greatest and most powerful country in the world, the one exceptional nation, chosen by God, came dangerously close to losing everything under the singularly evil and incompetent Biden (crime family head!, Ukrainian corruption mastermind!), aided by liberal judges and hateful Democrats, but was miraculously saved by a man who was also chosen by providence and the voters (not once but three times) and so the country is once more on track.

That none of this is true only seems to make it more potent as dramatic motivation for Trump’s performance.

Sports was more prominent than ever — the goalie who saved the game for the Americans over “the very tough” Canadians received the Presidential Medal of Freedom — and the pageantry of the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence will dominate everything well into next year.

The final paragraph of the SOTU described American history and the settlement of the West without a single reference to either slavery or the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, and an applause line was the end of DEI.

It is a narrative that has no room for any other country — except as enemies or supplicants — because the Trump fiction that has now been embraced by the Republican Party and its ideological amplifiers is a tale where the only country that counts is the United States of America.

The biggest lie in this narrative is that as a result of Trump’s impact, the U.S. is stronger and more respected than ever before. The truth is quite the opposite.

In Trump’s skewed version of authoritarian nationalism, no one else really matters, except to the extent that they are able to advance America’s interests (read Trump’s interests, which are so often at odds with America’s true interests that Make America Great Again has become a sad practical joke), or pose a direct threat to his power.

Indeed, the biggest lie in this narrative is that as a result of Trump’s impact, the U.S. is stronger and more respected than ever before. The truth is quite the opposite. The U.S., because of this president and his administration, is more mistrusted and disliked than it has ever been.

That reality will only get worse as America turns psychologically inward and projects its power to intimidate and crush, but loses the capacity to understand and show empathy for a world that is, in fact, every bit as real and human as the authentic United States of America.

For me, the lowest moment of the State of the Union was the vicious attack on the Somali community by name as he alleged unparalleled fraud in Minnesota and other blue states, and announced that Vice President JD Vance would lead the investigation across the country into “criminal fraud”.

This smearing, scapegoating and use of racist tropes evokes the darkest prejudices of history, and places the president deeply in the firmament of the truly paranoid style in American politics. It never ends well.

And as reality intervenes, with ICE, the Epstein Files, tariffs, affordability, once more on the daily agenda, life will return to the new normal, with potential attacks on Iran, Cuba and Mexico waiting in the wings to stir the pot of an exclusivist nationalism in a world that is more on edge than ever before. “America is back” the president boasted as he jutted his chin.

In other circumstances, at other times, from any other source, this would be welcome news to the world. It is now about as welcome as a boast that “Russia is back” or “China is back”.

This isn’t your grandfather’s autocracy. The rest of us have our work cut out for us.

Policy Columnist Bob Rae teaches and writes on law and public policy. He is a Fellow of Massey College, the Munk School at the University of Toronto, the Forum of Federations and a Matthews Fellow in public policy Queen’s University. He served as Ontario’s 21st Premier, interim leader of the Liberal Party of Canada, and Canada’s Ambassador to the United Nations.