CSPAN - Washington Journal Ben Johnsen
Aired: 2026-02-23
Duration: 02:55


=== State of the Union Prep (02:40) ===

[00:00:00]  Governor Abigail Spanbergs will also take your calls and bring you reaction from lawmakers.
[00:00:05]  Over on C-SPAN 2, experience the moments leading up to the speech and the address itself as if you're there, uninterrupted.
[00:00:13]  No commentary with unfiltered sights and sounds.
[00:00:16]  The State of the Union Address, live Tuesday, with coverage beginning at 7 p.m. Eastern on the C-SPAN Networks.
[00:00:24]  C-SPAN bringing you democracy unfiltered.
[00:00:31]  On the East Coast.
[00:00:32]  More phone calls in just a minute, but now we head to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue for a look at the preparations for tomorrow's Stay of the Union address.
[00:00:40]  Ben Johansson is a White House reporter for Politico, joins us.
[00:00:44]  Ben Johansson, what do we know today about the speech that the president will give tomorrow night?
[00:00:49]  We know the president enjoys feeding on a crowd, but how does he feel about the unique crowd that is provided by a State of the Union address?
[00:00:58]  Yeah, thanks, John.
[00:00:59]  Thanks for having me.
[00:01:01]  Yeah, I mean, so the Supreme Court decision on Friday, it really could not have come at a worse time for the White House.
[00:01:11]  I mean, we're calling people on Friday, people close to the White House, people within the administration, and they were quite animated.
[00:01:21]  You know, a former senior administration official said that Tuesday's game plan for the speech has been completely changed.
[00:01:28]  The speech will be completely changed now.
[00:01:31]  It's a completely different speech.
[00:01:32]  Obviously, State of the Union speeches get tinkered with until the last minute oftentimes.
[00:01:39]  But we know that over the weekend, the speechwriters were in the rooms and they were tinkering with the speech after arguably the most devastating loss of the last year for Trump.
[00:01:52]  And so it should be interesting.
[00:01:54]  I'm going to be watching personally.
[00:01:56]  This is going to be the first time the justices will be sitting front row, courtside.
[00:02:02]  And will he go scorched earth?
[00:02:03]  Will he call them out by name?
[00:02:06]  Will he call on Congress to act?
[00:02:09]  But I think it'll be a really interesting moment for him as, you know, arguably the biggest, his favorite tool to, you know, enact tariffs on European allies has been taken away from him.
[00:02:27]  So it should be a really interesting speech tomorrow.
[00:02:29]  Traditionally, after a Stay of the Union, the president takes his message from Congress onto the road and goes out into the country to sell that message.

=== The President's Rest Week Plans (00:14) ===

[00:02:41]  What do we know about the president's travel plans after Tuesday night?
[00:02:44]  What's he doing the rest of the week?
[00:02:45]  And is he going to be doing this, taking the message on the road?
[00:02:48]  Yeah, I mean, for the rest of the week, we don't see any domestic travel in his plan.