Supreme Court Tariff Ruling to Take Center Stage at State of the Union Address: Analyst

And staying with the State of the Union, we now bring on Rod D. Martin. He's a political analyst and the founder CEO of Martin Capital. Good to see you this morning, Rod. What do you make of the timing of the Supreme Court's judgment that invalidated Trump's tariffs, of course, right as he was getting ready to deliver this State of the Union address? How might that affect tonight's messaging? Well, it absolutely affects tonight's messaging. And good morning. Good to see you. This tariff ruling is going to be an important piece of the speech tonight, mostly because it was so narrow. And the punditocracy wants us to believe that all of Trump's tariffs strategy is in ruins and everything. That's simply not true. He has multiple sections of codes passed since 1930 that he can use and already started. He imposed a 15% global tariff immediately after the ruling. But the one that's untapped is Section 338, which is just amazing. The president has broad power to levy tariffs on foreign countries for national security reasons. Well, most of his tariffs fall under that. So nobody's going to get away from anything. What is going to happen is we're going to conclude the trade deals. And I think the Supreme Court delayed in part because they knew this would be the effect of their ruling, and they wanted him to get as many deals done as possible before the ruling so there wouldn't be confusion. And the truth of the matter is most of our major deals are now in place, and it's just a matter of dotting the i's. Very interesting to break down the view on the timing of this. And of course, speaking about timing, we're really heading into the midterm cycle. Primaries are already underway in some states like Texas. So talk about the impact of tonight's speech on the direction of the midterm contests. Well, if you look at last year's speech, it was really quite remarkable, first of all, because it was a great speech. It was a very fun speech. He was very engaging. He's jovial. He's harsh when he needs to be. But he laid out the agenda for the year incredibly well. These speeches are normally just a grab bag of everything. It's like you went to Walmart and just got a little bit of everything on the shelves. And this will be true here, too. But what Trump does in these speeches is actually lay out the plan. This is what we're going to achieve. And then he achieves it. So yeah, the midterms are front and center. The most important thing to Americans right now is the economy, and his economic numbers are stellar. The Wall Street Journal can disagree on some of the details of that if it wishes. But most of the people who are impacted by these changes, no taxes on tips, no taxes on Social Security, no taxes on overtime, full business expensing, most of these people don't read The Wall Street Journal. They certainly don't read The Atlantic. So the president's going to bring that message very strongly. He's going to lay things up for the boom that's really going to accelerate in Q2. And I think we're going to have a tremendous year. The other thing about the midterms that the Supreme Court hasn't addressed is they have heard oral arguments and are ready to rule on racially gerrymandered House districts. There are about 21 of those. No one needs a racially gerrymandered district. There are twice as many Black representatives from non-racially gerrymandered districts as from these racially gerrymandered districts, which I believe to be unconstitutional. I think they violate the Voting Rights Act. I think the Supreme Court's going to agree. And that potentially puts more than 20 seats in play that have been off the table. Yeah, and those seats, clearly, the balance of power could rest right there. So you bring up a really interesting point. The economy, as you said, is the number one issue going into the midterms. What other issues are the most important for the president to harp on here to resonate with the electorate? Obviously, he's had a lot of foreign successes. But are those key to what Americans want to hear, especially the ones that will be swing voters in the midterms? I think they're kind of third tier. Iran has unique priority just at the moment because it's about to be just quite nightmarish for the Ayatollah. However, the first and foremost thing beyond the economy is immigration. Joe Biden let 10 million illegal aliens flow into this country with zero vetting. Some of this during the pandemic, none of them were screened for COVID. You and I are wearing masks and being told we're going to have to have vaccine passports. These people came with nothing. And Biden didn't care. The Democrats didn't care. Fauci didn't care. So the fact that we're reversing that is a big deal on that level. It's also a big deal on housing because the absence of two and a half million illegal aliens just in this first year is already making a big difference in housing prices. It's making a big difference in other inflation numbers that you're seeing. No one really wants to address that in the mainstream media, but it's a key part. Anybody who had freshman economics understands supply and demand. Well, there's less demand and there's the same amount of supply. So prices are going down. And so he's going to address that. He's going to address ICE, which I think has acted heroically. And if you look at their operations around the country, the only place they've had trouble is Minneapolis, where the state and local governments were actively opposing them rather than cooperating or just standing aside. So that record's fantastic. And then he gets to foreign policy. And that's truly amazing. Eight peace deals in eight months last year. And while it looks like we're going to actually have to take kinetic action against the Iranian regime, the truth is there are hundreds of thousands of Iranians in the streets. The Lion and Son revolution is real. And we could see a transition to the kind of constitutional monarchy we saw after the fall of Ferdinand Francisco Franco in Spain, leading to the reestablishment of King Juan Carlos I, who instituted a parliamentary democracy within two years. I think that's where Iran's headed. And it may prove to be the best investment opportunity of the rest of the century. But it's certainly, certainly, if that happens, going to be a major U.S. ally. Yeah, Iran and Venezuela, both very oil rich. And as you as you mentioned, potentially a good opportunity if that rogue regime is no longer in power. That in parallel with the border peace and the rebuilding of Gaza, which looks like it will be the Miami of of that area of the Mediterranean. But I do want to get your sense as to what the Democrats plan to counter with. They have their own counterprogramming and then, of course, two televised rebuttals, one Virginia Governor Abigail Spanberger, the other in Spanish Senator Alex Padilla. What do you expect out of those speeches, Rob? Scott Adams used to describe what America is going through in recent times as seeing two completely different movies. They share the same facts. They share the same characters. But there's a Republican movie that sees the world one way and there's a Democrat movie that sees it as some kind of post-apocalyptic hellscape. And that's not going to change. You know, every single thing Donald Trump has done is racist. Somehow cutting taxes on Social Security is racist. Everything is terrible. Everything is authoritarian. Never mind that he's lived within the letter of every court ruling that's come down, including the manifestly stupid ones from activists, lower court judges that just almost immediately got overturned on appeal. Never mind that what he's been doing is actually striking down regulation after regulation. In the last year, the president has removed 100 regulations for every new one, which is extraordinary when you consider that when he first ran for office, he promised he would get rid of two regulations for every one new one. Now he's up to 100 to one. That's not the action of a dictator. That's the action of somebody who believes in very limited government. He wants to use his Article 2 powers to the maximum extent he can to advance his agenda and not go one step further. And so the Democrats are out in cloud cuckoo land, and I don't believe that the American people will buy it for a second. Well, Rod, you've laid out a lot to look for tonight. It's going to be quite a speech. And thanks for sharing your insights. Always appreciate it. Thank you.