On February 24th, 2026, President Trump delivered the longest State of the Union Address in American history. His speech addressed a range of topics such as the U.S economy, immigration, foreign policy, and defense. Many of his claims were either exaggerated or completely false. But even more striking was his framing of members of the Democratic Party as enemies of the American people. In multiple instances, he blamed them for the government’s shortcomings, regardless of whether the claims were factual.
When discussing healthcare for example, Trump mentioned his healthcare plan in these terms: “And I did that in my first term, and the Democrats immediately terminated it, with the full knowledge that they were doing a very bad thing for the people.” Further in the speech, he continued to blame. After making false remarks about children being taken away from their families to be forced into gender transition, he noted: “We’re lucky we have a country. With people like this — Democrats are destroying our country. But we’ve stopped it just in the nick of time, didn’t we?” After the speech occurred, the official White House website published a list of what Democrats refused to applaud for in Trump’s speech.
Just 11 years ago, this rhetoric of blame was not on the main stage. In his State of the Union Address on January 20th, 2015, former President Obama used unifying language instead. For example, he argued that “a better politics isn’t one where Democrats abandon their agenda, or Republicans simply embrace mine. A better politics is one where we appeal to each other’s basic decency instead of our basest fears.” Later in the speech, he stated: “I commit to every Republican here tonight that I will not only seek out your ideas, I will seek to work with you to make this country stronger.” Obama demonstrated, at least rhetorically, the need to sometimes put partisan politics aside, and, crucially, his respect for the opposition despite differences in beliefs.
What Obama’s past speech demonstrates, and Trump’s does not, is S. Levitsky’s and D. Ziblatt’s theory of mutual toleration. Mutual toleration is an unwritten democratic norm according to which politicians must accept their opposition as legitimate. This means recognizing rivals as decent, patriotic, law-abiding citizens, and believing that they also respect the Constitution (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). Instead, authoritarian leaders will describe their opponents as subversive, existential threats, criminals or foreign agents (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018). An extreme case is Russia’s foreign agent laws, which require non-governmental organizations that receive foreign aid and engage in political activity to be labeled as “foreign agents.”
Mutual toleration is essential to democracy’s survival. Its weakening is often a first indicator of democratic backsliding. In the words of S. Levitsky and D. Ziblatt, “When norms of mutual toleration are weak, democracy is hard to sustain. If we view our rivals as a dangerous threat, we have much to fear if they are elected. We may decide to employ any means necessary to defeat them-and therein lies a justification for authoritarian measures” (Levitsky and Ziblatt 2018: 104). As the 2026 Freedom House and V-Dem reports noted, the US democracy is showing concerning signs of erosion. The fading of mutual toleration has been a key factor in this process. It is therefore concerning when the language that Trump uses to talk about his opposition is not mutual toleration—instead casting blame on them and describing them as enemies to the American people. “In just about every case of democratic breakdown we have studied, would-be authoritarians- from Franco, Hitler and Mussolini in interwar Europe to Marcos, Castro and Pinochet during the Cold War to Putin, Chávez, and Erdoğan most recently- have justified their consolidation of power by labeling their opponents as an existential threat” (Levisky and Ziblatt 2018: 106).
Works Cited:
Associated Press. “Read Trump’s Full 2026 State of the Union Address.” PBS, February 25, 2026. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/read-trumps-full-2026-state-of-the-union-address.
Horton, Jake, Lucy Glider, and Tom Edgington. “Fact-Checking Trump’s Longest Ever State of the Union.” BBC News, February 25, 2026. https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgmlzg0p8k2o.
Koroteev, Kirrill. Russian-style “foreign agents” laws signal a rejection of … Accessed March 29, 2026. https://www.ned.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/NED_Foreign-Agent-Laws-in-Russia.pdf
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. 2018. How Democracies Die. Harlow, England: Penguin Books.
Office of the Press Secretary. “Remarks by the President in State of the Union Address | January 20, 2015.” National Archives and Records Administration, January 20, 2015. https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2015/01/20/remarks-president-stat e-union-address-January-20-2015.
The White House. “Democrats Showed Whose Side They’re on – and It’s Not the American People.” The White House, February 25, 2026. https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/02/democrats-showed-whose-side-theyre-on-a nd-its-not-the-american-people-249d/.
I really enjoyed the topic of your post and I also explored similar topics in my most recent post! Democratic norms, both formal and informal, are essential to a functioning modern democracy. When the president utilizes divisive rhetoric towards opposing parties rather than mutual toleration, which has long been the standard, he is further polarizing an already divided country. President Trump casts blame upon the Democratic party as an act of populism that frames him as the one “saving” America while also framing the Democratic party as corrupt and illegitimate. While mutual toleration is the norm that you analyzed, it is unfortunately not the only democratic norm that the president has been ignoring. He has also cast distrust upon institutions by rejecting the electoral process and also refused to follow the forbearance exercised by executive branches before him. I especially enjoyed your connection of this behavior to other international figures, it really helps illustrate the potentially imminent danger that this disregard for norms can put our country in.
This is an excellent take on comparing Obama and Trumps State of the Union. It’s crazy to see what is and isn’t acceptable for the president to say shift so dramatically in 10 years. Looking back at Obamas 2015 address, he at least tried to treat the other side like human beings that he disagreed with but was also committed to work with for the benefit of our country. Now it seems as if mutual toleration is totally gone. When leaders, like Trump, start calling their opponents enemies of the country and domestic terrorists they break the unwritten rules that keep our democracy functioning. It’s like he’s purposefully trying to make the other side look illegitimate so he has the justification for derailing our democratic system to keep them out of power. It’s scary to see and I know if it isn’t stopped soon we are heading for even darker times.
Your analysis is a clear example of how Trump’s presidency has put many aspects of democracy in danger. It is actually striking to observe that behavior such as Trump’s is deemed acceptable by his supporters. I am currently writing an article about affective polarization and social media’s role in the spread of political division, and I am also using Levitsky and Ziblatt’s insight on mutual toleration to highlight its lack in the current political climate, under Trump’s presidency. Like you did on your article, I would actually like to address how damaging Trump’s behavior on social media can be, especially when he expresses his opinions on political opponents. His actions and methods seem to reinforce the social divide affecting society, and he appears to benefit from it.
Your comparison between Trump and Obama is really effective at conveying democratic backsliding in the US. Compared to the State of the Union Address from Obama in 2015, Trump’s 2026 Address certainly holds a more authoritarian and populist attitude in a way that I didn’t think of. Rather than criticizing his political opponents for their policies or lack of effective policy, he resorts to insults and extremely dark rhetoric that the country was “saved” from what Democrats were doing, and that Democrats are bringing about a collapse in the United States. Your analysis clearly shows that the unwritten rule of mutual toleration is seriously degraded, if not completely absent from the US government at this point in time. Trump’s rhetoric definitely indicates a lack of respect or toleration for his opponents, and I fear this sets a dangerous precedent for future presidents.
I thought this was a really interesting comparison between the two presidents and how they thought about democracy during their terms as president. Trumps state of the union address really shows a much more aggressive and politically charged rhetoric then Obama’s speech does. His ominous phrasing of how he “stopped it just in the nick of time” implies a deeper conspiracy that he is trying to save the people from, a move that is designed to help his populist tactics and make him an idol figure. In my recent article I also discussed his populist tactics, and reading your article really made me think about how president Trump enacts his populist policies.