I did not watch it. Wise choice I'd guess. Bloviating and in that irritating style that is Trump's. If JD had delivered it it likely would have come across as less offensive. Less dreadfully tedious.
But having not watched it, a likely somewhat biased review is online, by GOP blogger Gary Gross. I link to that, with the opinion Gary is a nice enough guy, but he's dead wrong about something I did not think worth watching:
https://libertyprosperityblog.blogspot.com/2026/02/donald-trumps-triumphant-speech.html
Gary highlighted it had its blame-Biden dimension. He excerpted in larger print a quote of a speech segment, that of all things, started by blaming Biden then indulging in falsehoods or partial truths while citizens pay exorbitant tariff pass-throughs and are getting soaked by outrageously inflation-tainted supermarket prices they struggle to afford. If you agree with Gary, that's how politics gets parsed. If you did not watch it, you are with me and Robert Reich.
I am not bothering to find any online critical review. I presume some have been published and that readers can find one agreeing with whatever view they hold.
My bet, the poll numbers stay under water and "the Peace President" gets us mired into something with Iran because Bibi told him what he should do and Putin agreed.
________________UPDATE______________
It was longer than any previous SOTU, The Independent covered the event.
Anonymous Republican insiders started talking to a variety of sources after the speech had concluded. Although they insisted that it was a rousing, successful address to their sources — and Trump certainly did look healthier and sound more forceful than he has done in weeks — they also said they’d ideally have wanted some specifics about how he’s actually planning to improve the economy as it relates to normal people.
Even the MAGA faithful were muted for MAGA faithfuls. Kevin McCarthy tweeted about “America’s greatness” as shown by “war heroes” and Olympic champions”. Fox News claimed the president had left “Democrats seething”, with no actual examples. Chip Roy, bless his heart, called it a “home run”. Those boilerplate reactions really show how little the president gave them to work with: few specifics as they relate to voters, no new attack lines that are landing reliably. Others stuck to generic lines — a “bold vision” laid out for the future, “dominance” for America, and all that jazz — before pivoting into talking about their own agendas.
There was no takeaway line for the party to rally around. As the confetti settled, it became clear that Republicans had done their duty and little more.
Absolutely no one was expecting this State of the Union speech to be normal. What we underestimated was how weird that would become in a midterm year when his approval rating looks increasingly shaky. Trump now looks both out-of-touch and boring: two fatal political flaws for a man whose strength is wresting control of the attention economy and claiming he’s looking out for the people outside the swamp.
Further Independent coverage, here and here. There was that one quoted early coverage sentence saying Trump looked in better health than at other recent times, i.e., the dementia guesses could be wrong. We should hope so. Dementia is not something one would wish on a worse enemy. Age takes a toll, but many die still cogent, and we all hope that will be our personal ending.
_______________FURTHER UPDATE_______________
NBC coverage, saying in part:
On Tuesday, it was one thumb in the eye of Trump after another. More than a dozen House Democrats invited survivors of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to be their guests, centering on a topic Trump has been loath to speak about and has explicitly asked the country to move on from.
"How about those Epstein files?" Tlaib yelled at Trump during his speech.
Other Democrats, including former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, wore pins calling on the Trump administration to release all of the files.
And as Trump delivered a speech of record-breaking length, the Democratic gallery was partially empty. Dozens of Democratic lawmakers attended or spoke at alternative events
FURTHER: FOX gave a positive spin, noting the USA Olympic men's hockey team was there. See, however, https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2026/02/23/usa-womens-hockey-declines-invitation-state-of-the-union/88828973007/
Both teams won gold.
FURTHER: Gary posted this AP link to the full transcript of what Trump said.
Specific words which are absent-from-the-transcript words: elon miller bondi epstein files renee alex pretti investigation putin netanyahu bibi refugee crypto pardon(s) underage pedophile pedophilia survivor(s) = do the word search, each word, if you doubt. Those are words which will not go away, but words he might have choked on. The word "good" was used, but not as a proper noun, a person's name, dead or alive.