The president wasted no time getting to his lies. It started in the first minute, when he claimed that: “When I spoke in this chamber 12 months ago, I had just inherited a nation in crisis, with a stagnant economy, inflation at record levels, a wide-open border, horrendous recruitment for military and police, rampant crime at home and wars and chaos all over the world.”

None of that is truthful. Economic growth was actually a bit better during Joe Biden’s final year in office (2.8%) than in Trump’s first year (2.2%). In March of last year, inflation was not at “record levels”; it was 2.8% (in terms of percent change over the previous 12 months). Yes, it had surged to 9.1% in 2022, but it had been trending down since then. Nor was that 9.1% “the worst inflation in the history of our country,” as Trump knows perfectly well, because he lived through the 1970s and ’80s, when inflation reached 13.5%.

There was a rise in encounters at the border under Biden, but the actual number of entries — both among those released into the United States and “got aways” — is estimated to have been about 4.2 million. That’s 4.2 million, not the 20 million this administration constantly claims. Nor is there a shred of evidence that other nations were dumping their criminal and mentally ill populations at our borders. Nor is it the case that immigrants commit more crime than native born Americans. It’s the opposite. No, other nations have not committed to invest “$18 trillion” in the United States, nor do foreigners pay American tariffs, nor will tariffs replace the income tax. Here’s when you start digging your fingernails into your palms. It’s fact-check purgatory. Still, as contemptible as the compulsive lying is, the State of the Union highlighted another deformation of our republic that has reached its apotheosis in Trump: the assumption of presidential supremacy.

Take even the format of the speech itself. The president stands physically above the members of Congress, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the justices of the Supreme Court. This isn’t usually a problem when presidents are not maniacal narcissists. But now it feeds the pathology.

Few take note of the fact that the president is the invited guest of the Congress, not the other way around. The Constitution requires that the president “shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union.” It doesn’t require that he do so annually, nor does it require a live speech. Presidents starting with Thomas Jefferson sent their messages in writing.

Woodrow Wilson reverted to the Washington/Adams tradition of a spoken, in-person address. Calvin Coolidge was the first president to broadcast his. Congress has the power to insist upon the Jeffersonian practice.