The Democrats Who Got Weird During the State of the Union
The middle-aged man in a giraffe costume removed his sunglasses and told the crowd that he was breaking character in order to deliver an earnest message about the most effective way to counteract President Trump. “We do not fight absurdity with valor,” Rob Potylo, a comedian and political activist also known as Robby Roadmaster, said last night as Trump was delivering his State of the Union address. “We fight absurdity with more absurdity!” He then turned around and began to twerk. His little giraffe tail bounced up and down to the rapturous applause of an audience that included people wearing inflatable frog suits. Most people in the crowd were drinking. Earlier in the evening, Potylo had led the group in throwing dildos at a screen showing a livestream of Trump’s address to Congress.
The carnival-like atmosphere was a deliberate feature of the State of the Swamp, an event designed as counterprogramming for Trump’s most high-profile speech of the year. According to organizers at Defiance.org, the gathering at the National Press Club, in Washington, D.C., was also an effort to give Democrats a new, albeit bizarre and often crass, way to push back against a president who is adept at defying norms. Hosted by Miles Taylor, a former Homeland Security chief of staff during Trump’s first term who turned on his boss, the event was one of several last night that gave Americans an alternative to tuning in to the president’s record-long,108-minute State of the Union speech.
The evening featured a smorgasbord of figureheads from the so-called Resistance, a group of actual celebrities and those who command the spotlight on Bluesky: the actors Robert De Niro and Mark Ruffalo, the conservative lawyer turned Trump hater George Conway, the former Trump national-security official Olivia Troye, the voting-rights activist Stacey Abrams, and the former CNN anchor Jim Acosta. Several members of Congress also showed up, forfeiting their seats in the House chamber—where House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries had urged attendees to engage in “silent defiance”—to be part of something louder and more brazen.
American politics is suffering from fragmentation, as political partisans abandon shared national rituals in favor of gathering with like-minded crowds. The opposition party used to sit respectfully through the president’s address, offering its rebuttal only after it concluded. But now, even the Super Bowl halftime show inspires counterprogramming; this year, the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA put on its own event to protest Bad Bunny’s performance. At the same time, American politics is coarsening. Some progressives, observing Trump’s skill at dominating the attention economy, have concluded that the only way to beat him is to win the race to the bottom. The State of the Swamp, in a single evening, put both of these impulses on display.
In addition to the couple dozen inflatable frog costumes—a group called the Portland Frog Brigade made the costumes popular last year during anti-ICE protests—the crowd featured people in green attire and green hats with bulbous eyes glued onto either side. As a series of speakers gave remarks—several laced their speeches with profanity and references to Trump’s presence in the Epstein files—a video montage, which included images of Jesse Jackson, Malcolm X, Colin Kaepernick, and Muhammad Ali, played in the background. At one point, a woman pretending to be the White House press secretary held a mock press conference while sporting Fake News buttons and what appeared to be a fake baby bump. (Karoline Leavitt, the real White House press secretary, is pregnant.)
The crude and confrontational approach was a central part of the message and has become a dominant aspect of the broader anti-Trump effort during his second term. Representative LaMonica McIver, who was charged by Trump’s Justice Department last year with allegedly assaulting federal law-enforcement officers outside an immigration detention facility, told me that attending the event felt more appropriate than sitting silently in the chamber during the president’s speech. “We can’t operate like this is the norm, because everything that this president is doing is not normal,” said McIver, who has called the ongoing case against her a baseless political persecution. “We’re not in normal times, and we shouldn’t lead and operate like that.”
[Read: Trump’s suddenly high-stakes State of the Union]
In addition to the State of the Swamp jamboree, there was a rally on the National Mall, dubbed “The People’s State of the Union,” and at least three rebuttals to the speech from elected Democrats. The night of resistance was not without its challenges. While the liberal podcaster Wajahat Ali was wrapping up a panel discussion with former Senator Jon Tester of Montana, the former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, and the political commentator Tara Setmayer, he attempted to lead the crowd in a chant that married defiance and patriotism.
“On the count of three, we’re going to yell ‘Defy’ and then we’re going to yell ‘Love,’ because I don’t want to just be angry,” he said. Perhaps realizing that the successive chants would come out as “Defy Love” (not the most harmonious note to end on), he changed the second chant to “Love America.” After the crowd tried out that version, Setmayer stepped in to offer an option more pleasing to the ear: “How about ‘We defy because we love America’?” she said. Ali responded that he appreciated the “editing in real time,” and the crowd eagerly embraced the motto.
Or at least most of it did. At the end of the event, De Niro told the crowd that “in the current climate, expressing love, declaring love for our country, is like an abused spouse professing love for their abuser.” He repeatedly asked the attendees if they could love a country that had adopted so many of Trump’s policies. “No!” the audience yelled back as De Niro listed many of what he believed to be the president’s transgressions. (They included Americans being killed in the streets by masked agents, tax cuts for billionaires, and health care denied to people who can’t afford it.) Backstage, I asked De Niro, 82, why he’d shown up. “I don’t want to be part of this,” he said. “But I don’t see any other way. I can’t sit by and watch what’s happening in this country. I have to say something.”
The same urge also motivated many of the attendees, who sought an alternative to rage-watching Trump’s speech from their couch. Tickets for the event, which organizers said sold out, started at $99. Those with VIP tickets, starting at $1,000, received a full frog suit and had access to a VIP meet and greet where they had the chance to mingle with Resistance figures who are staples of cable news and social media. Walking the halls offered a throwback to the heady days of Trump’s first term; I saw characters such as the former Rudy Giuliani associate Lev Parnas, the former Playboy White House reporter Brian Karem, and the high-profile lawyer Abbe Lowell, who’d represented Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump during Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe. Conway, who is running for Congress in New York, appeared by video pledging to “impeach” Trump. Several people wore Deport Melania hats. There was a “reading room” with two laptops set up beside signs saying Browse Jeffrey Epstein’s Emails. Each seat in the main hall had a pocket-size Constitution, a mini U.S. flag, and some kind of frog-related paraphernalia to make it easier for attendees to get into the act. Merch included State of the Swamp T-shirts for $34.99. Taylor, the host, said that the proceeds from the event would go toward “pro-democracy efforts” such as peaceful protests and legal-defense funds.
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson told me that it was important for Democrats to “use every single tool that’s available” to push back against Trump, a man he called a “tyrant.” When De Niro learned that Trump intended to speak for close to two hours last night, his response summed up attendees’ sentiment toward both the president and State of the Swamp itself. “It’s crazy. It’s crazy,” he told me. “It’s fucking lunacy.”