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Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Reviews Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary? Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Lifestyle The New Sober Boom Getting Hooked on Quitting

Getting Hooked on Quitting

Education Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous Is College Necessary?

Liberal Arts Cuts Are Dangerous

Is College Necessary?

Finance Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Dying Parents Costing Millennials Dear

Gen Z Investing In Le Creuset

Crypto Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

Investing SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters ‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

SEC vs Celebrity Crypto Promoters

‘Dark’ Personalities Drawn to BTC

De Niro skewers Trump speech at State of the Swamp

A National Press Club counter-event highlighted fear — and hope — ahead of the midterms

Published February 27, 2026 6:45AM (EST)

Robert De Niro sat quietly in a corner. Just 15 feet away, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson was on stage speaking. “You can have democracy or you can have wealth in the hands of a concentrated few. But you can’t have both,” Johnson said at Washington’s National Press Club on Tuesday night. The audience of 500 had assembled for the State of the Swamp, an event created to serve as counter-programming for Donald Trump’s State of the Union.

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey had just finished speaking about how concentrated wealth destroys democracy. “Unity isn’t uniformity,” he explained. “We are a country of great debates and disagreements.”

De Niro absorbed it all. While the mayors spoke, Trump was several blocks away at the Capitol in the middle of a boring diatribe that ran nearly two hours. 

No one summed up the president’s speech better than CQ/Roll Call’s John Bennett. “What he did not do was ask the House and Senate to pass any new authorizations for him to use U.S. military force against Iran or to achieve his polarizing Western Hemisphere policy goals,” Bennett wrote. “In fact, the president spent just a few minutes on foreign policy, spending most of the address telling Americans who have grown frustrated with his economic and domestic policies that they are working — despite his declining poll numbers.”

The differences in tone and substance between the president’s address and the speeches at the Press Club were glaring.

The differences in tone and substance between the president’s address and the speeches at the Press Club from the likes of former Homeland Security official-turned-Trump-critic Miles Taylor, lawyer and New York congressional candidate George Conway, voting rights........

© Salon