00:00A special program that is taking place just a few minutes before the U.S. President Donald Trump delivers the
00:062026 State of the Union
00:08in a context marked by economic instability, internal turmoil, military incursions and threats against nations worldwide
00:17and also an hegemonie in decay.
00:19In this context we want to invite political analyst Eduardo Menezes.
00:24He is going to be here with us before and also after Trump's address.
00:29Welcome, Eduardo, to Telesur English. Thank you for joining us.
00:33Thank you very much for having me. It's a pleasure, as always, to be here.
00:37Eduardo, first, let's talk about some important facts that Donald Trump is entering this State of the Nation movement
00:44with an approval rating reportedly around 36%, which is actually a dramatic drop from the 45% he had when
00:53he took office last year.
00:54His approval numbers have plummeted among young voters, black and Latino voters, college-educated white voters, and also political independents.
01:03Why has this happened?
01:06Well, I would say that there are a couple of very important factors that can explain this drop in his
01:14acceptation in the public.
01:16I think the first one definitely has to do with the economic situation of the country.
01:21Trump made promises about recovery, about employment, about the conditions of the consumption for the workers in the United States
01:35that are not being improving.
01:39The promises are not being fulfilled, and this has a direct translation into the numbers that you just mentioned.
01:50I think that there are a couple of other factors that are really important.
01:54One of them is the way in which Trump presented himself as the president that was going to end military
02:04conflicts
02:06in which the United States were involved.
02:08And it definitely has been totally the opposite that has been observed in this year.
02:16We have seen a development of the aggressions of the war, the military tensions all over the world.
02:24And it's quite the opposite that Trump was promising during the campaign.
02:29And I think that lastly, we have two very important things that definitely has diminished the numbers that you were
02:37mentioned.
02:38The first one is linked to the Epstein files.
02:41Definitely the Epstein files, despite all the efforts that the U.S. government has been making to avoid the implication
02:51of Donald Trump in these files.
02:53This has not been possible.
02:57I mean, he has been mentioned thousands of times in these files that has made a big hit on the
03:03popularity of the president.
03:05And also all the incidents that have been related to the ICE, the immigration policy,
03:12We have been speaking about deaths, about children being kidnapped in schools, about families being separated while they were, for
03:25example,
03:25under the protection of some immigration processes that were totally legal.
03:31All of these processes affected, for example, a lot of the Black and Latino voters for Donald Trump.
03:39So there are many factors that have been affecting this, but I would say that the main summary that we
03:46can make is that
03:47a lot of the promises that Trump was doing during this campaign are not just not being fulfilled,
03:54but it's quite the opposite that is being happening during this year.
03:58Also, another particularity, as you were informing and speaking about the Epstein files,
04:03another particularity of the day is that in this State of the Union there are going to be victims of
04:08the late financier,
04:09Jeffrey Epstein, and also they are going to be present in a context in which Trump has been trying to
04:15diminish
04:16his presence along the files and also his refusal to speak openly on the matter.
04:22What's the symbolic message and also the symbolic meaning that with the presence of the victims there at this moment,
04:31in this crucial address?
04:33I mean, definitely there's a gap that has been created in the credibility of the president.
04:40We all know that Donald Trump comes from a millionaire background.
04:48He has always been part of the economic elite of the country and of the world.
04:55And something that these Epstein files did was they had this effect of showing how much this economic elite elite
05:05in the world
05:06and all this one percent of the most powerful men in the world have been developing all these series of
05:15outrageous sexual abuse,
05:19human rights violations, torture, and many other things in a context where none of them were being accountable for all
05:30these actions.
05:30And in fact, what we are seeing through Donald Trump is obviously a huge gap between the credibility of the
05:39president,
05:40but which is even deeper around the gap that is being more and more created between the people and this
05:49one percent of multimillionaires,
05:52billionaires that are allowed to do whatever they want.
05:55And I think that the symbolic presence of some of the victims during this State of the Union speech is
06:05a very good symbol of this gap that is increasing more and more every day.
06:13Also, another important information that was released today is that the administration imposed today new global 10 percent tariffs on
06:22nations,
06:23starting them lower than the president had vowed over the weekend.
06:28However, this is happening just days after the Supreme Court ruled that Trump was overstepping his authority,
06:35that the imposition of tariffs relays only on the U.S. Congress.
06:38also in this scenario with an economy as well in the clay.
06:43And I wanted to ask you how these tariffs impact not just the targeted nations,
06:48but especially the U.S. people from an economic perspective.
06:54Well, I think that is a perfect example of what we were mentioning, right?
06:59The way in which Trump is presenting these measures is a very demagogic way.
07:04There's no economic really dynamic or assessment of what could be the positive impact of all these tariffs that he's
07:18taking.
07:18It's only a way to trying to sell a narrative in which the United States could gain power by doing
07:28that,
07:29which is, in fact, a narrative of trying to show the United States as being this hegemonic power that has
07:36been in the, in fact, in the last years,
07:38but has been lost, let's say, in the last decade.
07:42The United States has been losing more and more of this power.
07:47And Donald Trump is trying to gain this narrative about we are still the most powerful country in the world.
07:55We can do whatever we want.
07:57We can impose this kind of tariffs.
07:58But in fact, what is going to happen is exactly the opposite.
08:02What we're going to see, and we have already been seeing that with the previous tariffs that were developed against
08:09some countries,
08:09is that, in fact, the price of the merchandising is not being paid by the people who is selling that
08:18to the United States.
08:19The price of the augmentations of tariffs is directly being paid by the consumers in the United States.
08:26So already in an economy that is at the brink of a recession, where there's unemployment rates that has been
08:34skyrocketing to really records in the last years,
08:39having these tariffs is really showing how the U.S. presidency has been developing its government.
08:47It's trying to impose a narrative, trying to win the perception of the voters.
08:52But even if those narratives are totally opposite to the reality, and what is happening is that I do believe
08:59that this separation between the material world,
09:02the reality of the working class in the U.S. and the totally fictional narrative of the president of the
09:11United States
09:12is not going to be able to maintain this distance for very long.
09:18I think the illusion of this narrative is going to be confronted to reality, and more and more that will
09:27continue hitting the popularity of the president.
09:30Another important information of today is that there is a Democrat boycott underway.
09:36At least a dozen Democratic lawmakers are opting to skip the speech and instead even participate in a counter-program
09:44at the National Mall.
09:46What message are Democratic lawmakers attempting to send to the U.S. people and the whole world by taking this
09:52stance?
09:53And what is going to be the impact of this decision?
09:57Well, for the moment, it is still a minority, right?
10:02This is not the whole Democratic Party.
10:05It is not a majority of them.
10:07But what we can see through this minority of Democratic representatives taking this kind of action is something deeper that's
10:17going on in the United States,
10:19which is the development of an authoritarian regime.
10:24We know that more and more all the actions that have been developed by the ICE, immigration police,
10:33all that we have been seeing on how Trump has been multiplying more and more the speeches about how maybe
10:41elections wouldn't be something that would be the best thing for the United States.
10:48And he has been promising for months that maybe it's not going to be necessary to continue voting for representatives.
10:58We've seen the violence of the state in the last months against people who are protesting for human rights,
11:05who are protesting against the violation of human rights by, for example, again, the ICE police.
11:12All of this is showing how the Democratic regime in the United States, which was already very low.
11:21And we can make a lot of analysis around how the Democratic culture in the United States have been eroding
11:30for years.
11:31But now is really reaching these points of the installation of authoritarian regime, which is going deeper and deeper every
11:40day.
11:40So I think that this boycott of the Democrats are trying to build a contest, a protest against this authoritarian
11:53building,
11:56which has two, I would say there are two pillars.
11:59One is the moral pillar, which is being built around the Epstein files.
12:04And the other is a more structural pillar, which is built about the violation of human rights,
12:10the threatens made to the democratic institutions by Donald Trump.
12:16So what we can imagine is that for the moment, this is a minority,
12:20but it is for sure going to grow with the more this authoritarian regime continue to be developed in the
12:31United States.
12:32You just mentioned the actions of ICE in the nation, and I wanted to happen,
12:37which actually is happening as the U.S. is entering an electoral year.
12:42I wanted to ask you how important is going to be this reaction from the government forces,
12:50the military forces and deployed throughout the nation in the outcome of the 2026 midterm elections?
12:59Well, there are two opposing dynamics that will be developing this year.
13:04I think that the first one is that definitely there's a core of the voters of Trump who will reinforce
13:12the belief
13:12that that is what the United States need.
13:15We are speaking about the score of white voters who have been convinced that a lot of the economic problems
13:27of the country
13:27is related to the immigration dynamics, which we all know that is totally false,
13:33but it is a very seductive narrative.
13:37And I think that the way in which President Trump has been dealing with all this discussion will reinforce those
13:45voters.
13:46But on the other hand, we know that there were a lot of, for example, Hispano voters, Latino voters.
13:53There are a certain amount of black voters who were supporting Donald Trump for the election
14:01that in this moment have already turned their back on the policy that has been developed against the immigrants in
14:11the United States.
14:12So what we could see, I would say, is in this year we will be seeing a polarization that is
14:22going to be increased more and more
14:25because that's exactly what Donald Trump is doing every day.
14:29He's trying to maintain the polarization.
14:31He's trying to make this polarization of the U.S. society wider and make it each day deeper.
14:41But we all, we will see a lot of the voters turning back to this polarization.
14:47So the question is how much it is going to be possible to, the real question is how much it's
14:58going to be possible.
15:08Eduardo, can you hear me?
15:10It seems like we're having some sound difficulties at this moment.
15:20Let me think.
15:21Yeah, what I'm always saying is that...
15:23Yeah, we go back to Eduardo at this moment.
15:25We have now signaled with him.
15:27We were speaking at this...
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