Analysis: Trump Speech Divides NH Pols Down Partisan Lines

By Michael Graham, NH Journal

Reaction from Democrats on the House floor watching President Donald Trump speak Tuesday night was so heated, one Texas congressman had to be removed from the room.

“You don’t have a mandate,” yelled Democratic Rep. Al Green of Texas, who stood up, holding out his cane and pointing it at the president. After ignoring repeated calls from the Speaker of the House to observe decorum, the cane-waving congressman was tossed out of the chamber.

“Democrats sure make it easy to be unapologetically partisan,” said New Hampshire House Majority Leader Rep. Jason Osborne (R-Auburn).

Rachel Potter, a legislative policy staffer for the New Hampshire House Democratic Caucus, on the other hand, retweeted the message, “We stand with Rep. Al Green.”

New Hampshire’s elected Democrats didn’t enjoy the speech, either. In fact, U.S. Sen. Maggie Hassan (D) didn’t even wait for the speech before denouncing it, releasing a “pre-buttal” of Trump’s remarks.

“I remain ready to work with the president and my Republican colleagues to lower costs. But the president has shown that his focus instead is on making families pay more for home heating oil, cutting veterans services, and appeasing brutal dictators like Vladimir Putin. It is long past time for this administration to get serious and get to work on bringing down prices, bringing the country together, and delivering for the American people,” Hassan said.

While the other Democrats in the New Hampshire federal delegation maintained radio silence during the speech, New Hampshire’s senior Sen. Jeanne Shaheen (D) fired off a series of tweets as Trump spoke. She specifically targeted the efforts to cut government spending led by DOGE.

“As elected officials, we need to be responsible with our tax dollars and cut waste where we can,” Shaheen said. “But instead of working across the aisle, DOGE is using a wrecking ball to indiscriminately target vital programs and services that Granite Staters rely,” Shaheen tweeted.

“Speaking of the budget: let’s not forget that House Republicans want to gut Medicaid,” she added. “If Trump gets his way here, billionaires will win big and folks who are just trying to access affordable health care will lose.”

A new NHJournal poll finds Granite States evenly split on support for DOGE, with 49 percent backing it and 51 percent opposed.

First-term U.S. Rep. Maggie Goodlander did not issue a statement regarding the speech Tuesday night, but she was one of the congressional women who wore pink to the House chamber in protest of Trump’s policies.

Republicans noted the irony that those women also voted against the Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act.

Trump’s was the longest State of the Union-style speech ever delivered. (Technically, Tuesday night’s speech was an address to a joint session of Congress.) It also received positive reviews from political professionals on both sides of the aisle.

“This was the most partisan speech I have ever heard a president give in a setting like this, and I’ve seen a lot of them,” said veteran journalist Brit Hume on Fox afterward. “And it was one of the most effective. Politically speaking, this was pretty powerful stuff.”

And former pollster for both Bill and Hillary Clinton, Mark Penn said:

“It was unquestionably a powerful speech featuring the stories of real and sympathetic Americans who have faced adversity or lost loved ones. There were parts people will disagree with, but most people will agree with most of the policies outlined, including closing the border, balancing the budget, the death penalty for cop killers, cutting fraud and waste, bringing peace to Ukraine, and better exploiting the country’s natural resources.

“The Democrats made themselves look small by failing to agree even on 90/10 issues or to vigorously salute people of courage and valor.”

The state Democratic Party posted a message claiming Trump would “deliver tonight’s address with the second lowest approval rating of any president in modern American history — beaten only by himself during his first term.”

According to RealClearPolitics, Trump currently has an approval rating of almost 49 percent in its polling aggregate, far higher than the 36 percent Joe Biden had when he left office in January.

“These guys already forgot about Joe Biden,” quipped state Rep. Jeremy Slottje (R-Hudson) in response. “I don’t blame them. Joe forgot about himself, too,”

This story was originally published by the NH Journal, an online news publication dedicated to providing fair, unbiased reporting on, and analysis of, political news of interest to New Hampshire. For more stories from the NH Journal, visit NHJournal.com.