David E. Sanger

And the Republicans all applauded him on it.

He then turned to what was clearly his biggest success.

He talked about the agreement that brought all the hostages, living and dead, out of the hands of Hamas.

That was a truly remarkable accomplishment.

Nobody thought it was possible.

And then overstated the ceasefire that has followed, which has been pretty rocky.

Then he just glided by what four years ago was the dominant subject of the State of the Union.

The Russian invasion of Ukraine, which happened four years to the day before this speech.

And while President Biden was out there four years ago getting bipartisan applause for his promise to stick with Ukraine thick and thin, in this case, the president simply said he's working on it, that there have been awful casualties, and he just wants to bring the war to an end.

which was the one thing the Ukrainians were looking for today on the fourth anniversary.

Just the message that we're with you.

And they didn't get it.

That's right.

And I'd say this was in some ways the lost opportunity of the speech.

Just explain that.

Well, he brushed by the topic of Iran so quickly that if you were a casual listener, you would never have known that we've got something like a third of the U.S.

Navy and a good deal of the American air power that's available around the globe parked off the Middle East and that within a few days,

We could well be in a situation where we're in an enduring conflict with Iran.

So he ran through Iran's offenses over the many years.

He raised the possibility that they were trying to reconstitute their nuclear program, which was pretty remarkable because eight months ago he was saying he obliterated the nuclear program and they wouldn't be able to restart it for years.