Michael Barbaro

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From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily.

Today.

In President Trump's first State of the Union of his second term, he offered a rosy portrait of a country that has lost confidence in his leadership and relentlessly baited Democrats as they try to win back control of Congress this fall.

My colleague, Chief Washington Correspondent David Sanger, takes us inside the room.

It's Wednesday, February 25th.

David, good evening.

We're back again.

This is your second episode, I think, in two days.

It's about 11.30 p.m.

on Tuesday night, and the president just wrapped his State of the Union address, and it was a very long State of the Union address.

And he did go longer.

This was the longest...

By New York Times calculations, State of the Union in history.

Well, David, as you know well, every State of the Union, no matter its length, feels deeply grounded in the moment in which it is delivered.

And I want to start there with you, with the stakes of this speech for President Trump as we went into this speech on Tuesday night.

Right.

I would say that an economy Americans are extremely anxious about, a tinderbox potential war in the Middle East, a tariff ruling that went against him, all in an election year, makes for about as high stakes a State of the Union as you can really imagine.