{"id":7953,"date":"2026-02-26T17:08:53","date_gmt":"2026-02-26T17:08:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7953"},"modified":"2026-02-26T17:08:53","modified_gmt":"2026-02-26T17:08:53","slug":"opinion-trumps-state-of-the-union-was-rage-bait","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7953","title":{"rendered":"Opinion | Trump\u2019s State of the Union Was Rage Bait"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div id=\"\">\n<p class=\"css-8hvvyd\">If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you may have heard of a type of content called rage bait. \u201cOur country is winning again. In fact, we\u2019re winning so much that we really don\u2019t know what to do about it.\u201d Rage bait, as the name would suggest, is content that is explicitly designed to make you kind of mad, to make you upset, to make you enraged. \u201cThese people are crazy.\u201d And to react with anger and preferably potentially create some engagement for the person producing the rage bait. \u201dThe president of the United States.\u201d As I was watching the president\u2019s State of the Union on Tuesday, the long, two-hour State of the Union, my thought the entire time was that this is rage bait. I say that it\u2019s rage bait because once you got past the initial boilerplate, it was really nothing more than a series of provocations. \u201dWhy would anybody not want voter ID. One reason. Because they want to cheat. There\u2019s only one reason.\u201d Provocations aimed at opponents of the president and Democrats. Provocations, really racist invective, aimed at Somali Americans and other immigrant groups that are in the president\u2019s crosshairs. An entire section of the speech, where the president leads his party in jeers and shouts at their Democratic colleagues. \u201dHe should be ashamed of yourself. That is why I\u2019m also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals.\u201d And an orchestrated attempt to present Democrats as un-American. \u201dThey\u2019re blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself.\u201d An entire digression about how Democrats could not possibly win elections if not for cheating and fraud. \u201dThey want to cheat. They have cheated, and their policy is so bad that the only way they can get elected is to cheat. And we\u2019re going to stop it.\u201d As if Democrats themselves are almost illegitimate members of the political community. During this, he called voting a privilege, something that must be restricted. Again, that\u2019s rage bait. That is designed to make people angry. Designed to invoke some kind of reaction. \u201dThese people are crazy. I\u2019m telling you, they\u2019re crazy.\u201d Now, what does it mean that the president of the United States is using the State of the Union, which is supposed to be a time when the president speaks about the past year, where the president makes plans for the upcoming year, and where the president speaks to the entire people, and not just a segment of them. What does it mean that the president used that space, which isn\u2019t his, which belongs to Congress, which is to say it belongs to the entire American people. What does it mean to say that he used this to engage in rage bait. It\u2019s a demonstration of a few things. The first, and I just alluded to it, is that Trump does not see himself as president of the United States, if that means the whole people of this country. He sees himself as president for a handful of people, a select group of people. And if you\u2019re outside that group, he feels no obligations to you. The second thing is that if this were truly a successful and productive presidential administration, Trump would have a lot to talk about. Compare this State of the Union to say, Barack Obama\u2019s State of the Union in 2010, Even to Biden\u2019s State of the Union in 2022. Those were presidencies in which the president and his party accomplished something. They had legislation to speak about. Trump doesn\u2019t. He has one piece of legislation under his belt, the \u201dbig beautiful bill.\u201d And otherwise he has nothing but a series of executive orders, many of which have either unraveled due to lawsuits or haven\u2019t been very effective in the first place. His tariffs have been struck down by the Supreme Court, and his deportation program and immigration policies have become so unpopular that Americans are calling for reform, defunding and even abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In other words, the reason that the president has made his State of the Union an exercise in rage bait is because he has nothing else. Trump is trending towards a failed presidency, and the only thing he can do now is to try to make people mad and distract their attention from the simple fact that he cannot and is not governing this country.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you may have heard of a type of content called rage bait. \u201cOur country is winning again. In fact, we\u2019re&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":639,"featured_media":7954,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[7],"tags":[8780,57,2042,1390,750,3150],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Opinion | Trump\u2019s State of the Union Was Rage Bait - Frisco Times<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/friscotimes.org\/?p=7953\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Opinion | Trump\u2019s State of the Union Was Rage Bait - Frisco Times\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you spend any amount of time on the internet, you may have heard of a type of content called rage bait. \u201cOur country is winning again. 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