President Trump warned that he plans to deliver a “long speech” for Tuesday’s State of the Union as he battles abysmal approval ratings and seeks to turn around a string of political setbacks. Boasting of supposed successes that relatively few Americans give him credit for, Trump said he is go ing to spend as long as it takes to tick off what he calls a string of victories in the first year of his historic second term. “I mean, it’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” Trump said at an unrelated White House event of the address, which is scheduled to start after 9 p.m. and will be aired by major news and cable networks. The bar is high when it comes to Trump singing his own praises. He spoke for a record-setting 100 minutes to last year’s joint session of Congress, which was not technically a State of the Union address. But it’s likely going to take more than a long campaign-style speech to turn around Trump’s poor political standing. The second-oldest president in American history is saddled by sub-40% approval ratings and is far underwater even on his handling of the economy and immigration, which were at one time his strong suits. His Republican allies are facing a grim outlook in the fall midterms, according to polls. Democrats are optimistic they can retake the House and even give the GOP a run for their money in the Senate. After scoring a string of victories in the first few months back in the White House, including pushing his Big Beautiful Bill of tax and spending cuts through Congress. Trump’s political momentum has stalled badly in recent months. Trump’s mass deportation campaign has become increasingly unpopular as Immigration and Customs Enforcement have wreaked havoc on the streets of American cities. The public recoiled at the killings of two U.S. citizens by masked federal agents in Minneapolis last month. After emphatically vowing to release all the files related to the Jeffrey Epstein case, Trump alienated many of his loyal supporters last year by flip-flopping and seeking to keep them under wraps, raising suspicions of a cover-up. He suffered a crushing blow last week when the conservative-led Supreme Court struck down his tariffs, his signature economic policy initiative. That put the justices on the same page as the more than 60% of Americans who oppose the levies on imported goods. Perhaps most of all, Americans are unhappy at the state of the economy, which Trump vowed to turn around after rising prices under former President Biden. Millions have been hit with skyrocketing health costs as Trump and congressional Republicans refused to extend Obamacare insurance tax credits. “The state of the union is falling apart,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the House Democratic minority leader. Trump can still count on his loyal Republican lawmakers to shower him with standing ovations. Democrats plan to either boycott the speech or sit in stony silence, although some might defy their leadership and mount disruptive protests. One question is how many Supreme Court justices will attend after Trump has spent days deriding them over the tariffs decision, and whether the president will violate decorum to attack them. But when the cheering and jeering dies down and he finally wraps up the speech, Trump is likely to be in the same political hole he was before he walked into the Capitol. ...read more read less