In an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump denounced Biden-era policies, mocked Democrats and lauded his administration’s early hailstorm of executive actions. He was, he said, “just getting started.”
How did his speech go over? The New York Times talked with six voters — many of whom voted for Mr. Trump reluctantly — as part of a regular check-in over the first 100 days of Mr. Trump’s term.
‘It was very nice to see a lot of empathy.’
Tali Jackont, 57, from Los Angeles
What struck Tali Jackont, an educator, more than anything was Mr. Trump’s showmanship. The president, she said, showed off his magnetism — his ability, like it or not, to combine forcefulness with bristling digs. She also enjoyed his humor.
“Listen, he understands the media, he understands TV,” she said. “He tried to say things here and there to break the seriousness of the speech,” she added, noting that there were a few times when she found herself laughing out loud.
The entire speech, she added, “was very impressive.”
An immigrant from Israel and longtime Democrat, Ms. Jackont changed political course in November, voting for Mr. Trump, hoping that he could help Israel achieve peace, while reducing crime and getting her adopted country moving in a better direction. Though she would have liked the president to have spent more time on the Middle East, she said, his speech addressed the issues she cared about to her satisfaction.
One thing that surprised Ms. Jackont: the time Mr. Trump took to acknowledge cabinet members and speak compassionately about guests in the audience, like Devarjaye Daniel, a 13-year-old known as D.J., who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, and was invited to the speech.
“It showed a little bit of warmth of personality when he spoke about people,” she said.
“It doesn’t mean that he cannot behave the opposite and kick someone off like Zelensky,” she added, referring to Volodymyr Zelensky, the Ukrainian president. “But it was very nice to see a lot of empathy. It was very nice to see.”
— Kurt Streeter
‘This was supposed to be a speech about how he was making America great again, but he was throwing out insults.’
Isaiah Thompson, 22, from Washington, D.C.
Isaiah Thompson, a college student, was expecting a finely tuned performance from Mr. Trump in his speech to Congress. After all, he said, the president has had a long career in entertainment.
What he was not expecting was the congressional response.
“On the Republican side, you had people standing, waving and chanting, ‘U.S.A.,’ and on the Democrat side, you had people sitting in silence and holding signs that said, ‘Musk steals,’” he said, referring to the tech mogul Elon Musk. “That one room showed how divided the country is. That divide worries me.”
Mr. Thompson said he was fine with the president listing his accomplishments in the first six weeks of his second term, much of it an echo of the promises made in his inauguration speech in January. He acknowledged that the volume of Mr. Trump’s actions is impressive, but remained troubled by the pace.
The address, he said, was intentionally provocative, with Mr. Trump taking unnecessary swipes at Democrats. “This was supposed to be a speech about how he was making America great again, but he was throwing out insults,” said Mr. Thompson, who supports the Green Party but ultimately voted for Kamala Harris.
Mr. Thompson was particularly bothered by Mr. Trump’s use of tariffs as a bargaining tool and his description of certain programs — involving Africa, immigration or L.G.B.T.Q. communities — as a flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars.
“It feels like those programs were targeted by DOGE, when there are plenty of other programs that could be cut,” he said, referring to Mr. Musk’s effort to cut back the federal government.
— Audra D. S. Burch
‘I’m ashamed of the Democratic Party.’
Darlene Alfieri, 55, from Erie, Pa.
“In my opinion, as a Democrat, that was a Republican Party win,” said Darlene Alfieri, a longtime registered Democrat who had taken a chance on Mr. Trump in 2024.
She did not come to this conclusion primarily because of the president’s speech. It might have been a bit more professional than some of his past speeches, she felt, but it was still light on the specifics she craved.
“He’s still talking that we’re going to be great, that things are going to get better, but I’m not seeing them get better in my day to day life,” she said. “Talk is cheap.”
No, she believed it was a good night for Mr. Trump primarily because she thought it was a terrible night for the Democrats, some of whom heckled the president at the beginning and then mostly refused to stand and clap throughout, even for Devarjaye Daniel, a boy with cancer that the president recognized in the crowd.
“I’m ashamed of the Democratic Party,” she said. “Deliberately being argumentative and refusing to acknowledge good when it’s good is ridiculous.”
As for Mr. Trump himself, her opinion has remained the same since the election: supportive of his broader goals, frustrated that he is not more forthcoming about how he plans to achieve them. She welcomed the elimination of waste in the federal government, but wondered whether there were measures to make sure it did not come back? Reviving U.S. manufacturing is a great goal, she thought, but how much economic pain would it require?
Mr. Trump’s speech did not answer many of these questions.
“How is this going to happen?” she asked. “How long is it going to take? What are we going to have to endure in the meantime?”
— Campbell Robertson
‘The way he said the American dream is alive, and coming back, that’s a message of hope.’
Hamid Chaudhry, 53, from Reading, Pa.
Hamid Chaudhry, a business owner, had cast a skeptical vote for Mr. Trump last year. He liked the president’s business-minded approach but was concerned about his harsh rhetoric on immigrants. Mr. Chaudhry, now an American citizen, had come to the country from Pakistan.
But Mr. Trump’s speech touched on many of the themes that drew him to this country in the first place. “I came to America for the land of opportunity,” Mr. Chaudhry said. “The way he said the American dream is alive, and coming back, that’s a message of hope.”
He liked Mr. Trump’s words of support for farmers, knowing many in rural Berks County, and he appreciated the talk of bringing manufacturing back. He liked the idea of spending money on problems here rather than in foreign countries.
Mr. Chaudhry was not yet panicking about the impact of tariffs on the farmers and small business owners, believing that the tariffs were simply a tough negotiating move. As an example of what he saw as Mr. Trump’s deal-making savvy, he pointed out that Mr. Zelensky had publicly committed to negotiating a peace deal after being berated at the White House a few days earlier.
The president “called his bluff,” Mr. Chaudhry said.
The strident talk about immigrants still bothered him, and he worried that constantly blaming them for so many problems might unleash hatred that could prove difficult to control. But he said Mr. Trump’s actions — surrounding himself with Kash Patel and Usha Vance, born to immigrant families, and Mr. Musk, born in South Africa — suggested that his fiery talk was more rhetorical than substantive.
All in all, Mr. Chaudhry said, “I’m feeling more comfortable” about Mr. Trump. But, he added, “I hope, at the speed they’re moving, there’s no major screw up.”
— Campbell Robertson
‘He’s constantly working angles.’
Perry Hunter, 55, from Sellersburg, Ind.
The Democrats’ behavior during the speech was also a huge turnoff for Perry Hunter, a high school teacher. He was disappointed, for example, that they mostly did not applaud — even when Mr. Trump announced that “a top terrorist” had been captured for a bombing in Afghanistan that killed American military members, or when the boy with cancer was awarded a Secret Service badge.
“If they can’t get past their partisanship for these things, it just reinforces that the Democrat Party is not for regular Americans,” he said, adding that Mr. Trump knows exactly how to appeal to “regular Americans.”
The speech was Trump showmanship at its best, Mr. Hunter said, full of typical political bluster, which appears to be how Mr. Trump gets things done. Look how Mr. Zelensky was now agreeing to make concessions and participate in peace talks, he added, just several days after the tense and dramatic Oval Office meeting that led Mr. Trump to pause aid to Ukraine.
“Everyone thought it was the end of us helping them,” Mr. Hunter said. “But the way it was handled, correctly or not, Zelensky is now basically apologizing.”
He called Mr. Trump “a master negotiator,” adding, “He’s constantly working angles.”
“The thing that bothers me the most about him, though, is that he thrives in chaos,” he said. “It just seems like he wants that.”
Mr. Hunter isn’t sure what to make of the tariffs just yet, but he said Mr. Trump has two years, until the midterm elections, to make them work for the American economy. While he personally would tolerate rising prices in the short term if that led to them dropping in the long term, he expects other Americans to “want everything now, immediately.”
“You have to have patience,” he said, “and I’m not sure how patient we are.”
— Juliet Macur
‘Trump is accomplishing what many of the people who voted for him were hoping.’
Jaime Escobar Jr., 46, from Roma, Texas
It only took a few minutes, but for Jaime Escobar Jr., the mayor of a small town on the Texas border, the disruption of Mr. Trump’s speech by Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, was another reminder of the nation’s political divide.
“It is expected, yet a little sad,” Mr. Escobar said, adding, “When a president speaks, regardless of the political party, I think there should be a sort of decorum.”
Mr. Escobar paid particular attention to Mr. Trump’s message on immigration. Roma, population 11,000, struggled with a migrant crisis under the Biden administration. Seeing his hometown overloaded by the daily arrivals led him, once a loyal Democrat, to vote for Mr. Trump. He was not alone. Starr County, home to Roma, also flipped for Mr. Trump.
“Illegal crossings have gone down significantly — and it didn’t take so much an act of Congress, but an executive order and a different type of leadership,” Mr. Escobar said. “Trump is accomplishing what many of the people who voted for him were hoping he would accomplish.”
But not everything in Mr. Trump’s speech left him brimming with optimism.
In fact, he went to bed worried about how the tariff wars between the U.S. and its trading partners would affect the local economy of Roma, which has close commercial ties with Mexico.
“We don’t know how that’s going to impact us,” he said, a tint of worry in his voice.
— Edgar Sandoval
