Trump’s State of the Union squanders chance to change unhappy NC voters | Opinion
Polls have consistently shown that North Carolinians are unhappy with President Donald Trump’s handling of issues like affordability and health care. He’s even slipping on immigration, an issue that was once his strong suit. His overall approval rating is lower than it’s ever been.
During Tuesday’s State of the Union address, Trump had a chance to address that. It was the biggest platform he had to do so ahead of a midterm election that, at the moment, is expected to hammer Republicans in November. His speech probably didn’t lose Republicans any more voters, but it likely wasn’t enough to change anyone’s mind.
Trump needed to show Americans that he is taking their affordability concerns seriously, but it felt more like he was trying to convince them that their concerns aren’t real. The United States is experiencing “a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages,” he said. He suggested that “affordability” is a word that Democrats recently invented out of thin air to describe something that is actually their fault.
Sure, the stock market is healthy, but that’s not what most working people care about. They care about kitchen table issues like the price of groceries, housing and health care. All of those things have gotten more expensive. Trump claimed that prices are actually going down, which is false.
Besides, voters don’t need reassurance. They need answers, and Trump did not offer much by way of a solution on Tuesday. He spent just shy of three minutes talking about affordability, according to NBC News, which is only slightly longer than the amount of time he spent talking about the U.S. men’s hockey team and their Olympic gold medal. He didn’t really announce any new plans to address voters’ economic woes, and he doubled down on tariffs, which more than half of North Carolinians disapprove of, polls show.
Republicans can be relieved that Trump stuck to the script, but it’s still not a very good script. One big positive, though, was that Trump largely avoided discussing the more controversial parts of his immigration agenda. While he did speak about border security and “criminal illegal aliens,” he didn’t bring up the mass deportations that have drawn outrage from Americans of all political stripes. Polls show that North Carolinians give Trump a stronger grade on border security than they do on immigration in general.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a Trump speech without a hefty amount of grievances and lies. He falsely claimed that “cheating is rampant in our elections.” He incorrectly stated that the man who killed 23-year-old Iryna Zarutska on Charlotte’s light rail last year was an undocumented immigrant who “came in through open borders.” And one of the more astonishing moments came when Trump bragged that “in one year, we have lifted 2.4 million Americans — a record — off of food stamps.” Those people were “lifted” off of food stamps because Republicans kicked them off. He also insisted he would “protect Medicaid” despite slashing funding for it last year.
The State of the Union was never going to have a dramatic impact on the political landscape. Few, if any, of these addresses do. But it did give Trump an opportunity to regain some of the momentum his presidency has lost, and that opportunity was pretty much squandered. For as much as Trump bragged about “winning too much,” his prolonged obstinance on voters’ biggest sore spots suggests that in November, Republicans might find themselves losing, in North Carolina and beyond.
Deputy Opinion Editor Paige Masten is covering the 2026 elections for The Charlotte Observer and The News & Observer.
This story was originally published February 25, 2026 at 5:42 AM.
