The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 9
March 2, 2026
This week:
- Trump delivers powerful State of the Union speech
- Trump gambles it all on an Iran regime-change operation
- Graham Platner: Raging bull or paper tiger?
Outlook
State of the Union: Despite its great length, (length can be a true speech-killer) President Trump delivered by far the most powerful State of the Union speech of his presidency so far. And it hit all of the hot notes we anticipated, and then some.
Trump not only raised the key issues to highlight his most popular accomplishments — on crime, immigration, inflation, and the restoration of sanity post-Woke Era — but he put on a tremendous show.
Again and again, he induced Democrats to take the wrong side of an 80-20 issue. They refused to stand up and cheer for weeping mothers of crime victims; for the families of people whose lives had been devastated by reckless-driving illegal aliens; for a young woman who at age 14 had been essentially kidnapped by public school authorities, taken across state lines and gender-transitioned against her parents’ will, resulting in her running away from home and being sexually abused in multiple states. Why, many Democratic lawmakers even refused to cheer for the gold-medal U.S. Men’s Hockey Team. In their liberal bubble-world — reinforced by a lot of frivolous journalism that in no way reflects actual public opinion — the team had supposedly transgressed by inviting FBI Director Kash Patel into their locker room celebration and laughing at a joke Trump made over the phone when he called to congratulate them.
The speech had its intended effect of improving Trump’s image, reinforcing Democrats’ extremism, and resetting the issues ahead of the midterm elections. According to the ratings, 33 million people watched, and Snap polls suggested that of those who watched, and two-thirds of them came away with a positive reaction to the speech — 64 percent said they believe Trump’s policies will move the nation in the right direction.
Iran: The luring of Democrats into traps continued apace as the week wore on. The State of the Union feels like it was a year ago at this point because of the next bold U.S. foreign policy move.
In the last two months, Trump has arrested and renditioned Venezuelan dictator Nicolas Maduro, killed Mexican Cartel boss Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera, and put Cuba’s 67-year-old communist regime on the ropes. Then, over the weekend, he launched a much-anticipated operation to weaken Iran’s theocratic regime and encourage a popular overthrow of its government from within. This included decapitation strikes, in conjunction with Israeli forces, that swiftly killed off much of Iran’s leadership, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamanei and leading military leaders in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
There is a real sense that Trump intends to settle all family business this term, if not this year.
Democrats have been divided over the operation. Some are even walking into the trap of rooting for or almost rooting for the mullahs.
For Trump, the attack is a highly controversial move, given his positioning since the beginning of his political career as an anti-war political leader. Some Republicans are very uncomfortable with it — indeed, he seems to be carrying out something that looks very much like the foreign policy of the Never-Trump wing of the party.
At this point, many of Trump’s biggest fans are trying to justify the operation in their own minds as a relatively low-commitment affair with little risk of spilling over into a greater long-term conflict. Strangely, they are probably right. As far as negative consequences or blowback, that seems unlikely — the Iranian public seems genuinely enthusiastic and the Gulf Arab countries are low-key supportive after Iran reacted immediately by targeting random civilian buildings in their countries.
Meanwhile, the Iranian regime itself and its terrorist proxy militias (Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah), already much-weakened by earlier operations (such as the exploding pager plot), had already been doing almost as much as they could to attack and disrupt U.S. and allied interests abroad, including assassination plots and attempts against Trump himself and multiple other Americans and westerners in allied countries.
In short, there wasn’t much to lose in terms of the existing regime’s good will.
One poll shows overwhelming disapproval of the strikes (43 percent against to 27 percent in favor), but the number there doesn’t quite square with other surveys showing as many as 51 percent supporting such an attack just before it started. But the key for Trump, in political terms, is to avoid letting the operation drag out or result in mission-creep. As the material losses and human casualties involved are de minimis, the public will accept an operatio with a positive outcome.
Endgame: Trump’s operation is risky and may well fail. But one criticism is completely unfounded: Those who argue that Trump has no endgame are simply uninformed.
The endgame has always been there in plain sight. In an optimistic scenario, the end comes when Iran’s regular army intervenes and restores order, displacing the fanatics of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the mullahs who have run the Islamic Republic since the 1979 revolution. Presumably, the U.S.-Israeli operation would never have been launched if that had not been viewed as a realistic possibility.
Even failing such an optimistic result, there is an alternative endgame. An intermediate victory would come in the form of a much-chastened third-string Iranian leadership accepting a nuclear deal on Trump’s terms in order to avoid total annihilation.
Either way, the attack against Iran has already dramatically weakened China, which depends on Iran for oil, and Russia, which has depended on Iran for a steady supply of low-cost drones in its conflict with Ukraine.
Obviously, war has dramatic and disastrous consequences whenever it occurs. But from a purely political perspective, the disaster scenario for Trump and Republicans is a conflict that spreads or results in serious U.S. losses.
Senate 2026
Maine: Democrats are getting increasingly nervous as communist oyster farmer Graham Platner (D) glides toward a primary victory over the establishment favorite and polls start to come out suggesting that he will lose badly to Sen. Susan Collins (R).
The campaign of Gov. Janet Mills (D) may be desperate at this point, and the polls are both partisan (one Republican, one Democrat), but results that show Platner defying gravity fly in the face of Collins’s track record in statewide races. Mills’s own internal poll, by Impact Research, shows Platner losing to Collins by double digits, 55 to 41 percent. A Republican poll by Tony Fabrizio has Collins leading Mills by just one point but leading Platner by a similar 13-point margin, 51 to 38 percent.
The Mills campaign highlighted this in a late February memo, arguing that other polls are oversampling younger voters.
Meanwhile, unions in Maine are trying to make Democratic leaders back down from intervening on Mills’s behalf in the primary — highly unlikely, since they recruited her. Surveys of the Democratic primary vary between a very large Platner lead over Mills and a five-point lead for Mills over Platner.
The same week, Platner sat down for a podcast interview with a host known for conspiracy-mongering and antisemitism.
Platner was also endorsed by Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.).
Massachusetts: Sen. Ed Markey (D) looks surprisingly weak against primary challenger Rep. Seth Moulton (D). The incumbent leads only 35 to 23 percent, according to a survey released last week by the University of New Hampshire. The only saving grace for Markey is that the numbers haven’t moved against him since the same poll was taken in January.
Texas: With Election Day looming tomorrow, the Democratic primary between establishment favorite state Rep. James Talarico (D) and Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) is far too close to call. A new Emerson poll shows a statistical tie between the two (52 to 47 percent, Talarico) with Talarico leading among early voters and Crockett set to dominate tomorrow’s vote on the day-of. Her ability to win the primary depends mostly on getting out the black vote; it could even depend on Republicans crossing over in the open primary and voting for her instead of bothering with the messy Republican primary.
On the Republican side, there is virtually no doubt that Attorney General Ken Paxton (R) will finish first, but he will probably still be shy of an outright majority. He is at 40 percent in the Emerson survey and could come closer to an outright win than anyone expects. Paxton will also be the clear favorite in any May runoff.
Sen. John Cornyn (R), despite already spending an astounding amount of money on the primary — it could approach $100 million when it’s all said and done — has failed to improve his standing all the same. Still, the Emerson survey puts him at 36 percent, in second place like many others. He will almost certainly finish second, ahead of Rep. Wesley Hunt (R), and make the runoff.
Hunt never caught fire as the alternative candidate, more pleasing to the base than Cornyn but less scandal-plagued than Paxton. Trump, who has good relations with all three, could still intervene if he wanted by appointing Cornyn to the federal bench. Were Cornyn to withdraw from a runoff he is nearly certain to lose, the candidate with the third-greatest vote total would take his place on the runoff ballot, according to state law.
House 2026
Texas: Two House races worth watching on Tuesday. First, in Texas-2, Rep. Dan Crenshaw (R) is in a serious fight after Sen. Ted Cruz (R) made a late endorsement of his primary opponent, state Rep. Steve Toth (R).
Second, we are told to watch Texas-31, where octogenarian Rep. John Carter (R) is mired in a ten-way primary (one of the candidates is “Shamwow guy” Offer Vince Shlomi) and might be forced into a runoff.
