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Trump Clearly Doesn't Like Obama's SOTU

by Seth Millstein

On Tuesday, President Obama delivered the last State of the Union address he'll ever give. Shortly before South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley gave the official Republican response, casino magnate and GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump chimed with a response of his own. His take: The speech was boring, and also, the Iran nuclear deal was a bad idea. In addition to being rather sparse, Donald Trump's State of the Union response was or less what you might have expected.

Trump has recently retaken the lead in Iowa from rival Ted Cruz, so depending on how things shake out, Trump may one day be in the position of giving a SOTU address of his very own. We're obviously not there yet, but two days before Obama's address, Trump did offer a one-sentence diagnosis of America's condition.

"The state of our union is a mess," Trump bellowed on Meet The Press. "Our economy's doing horribly."

As Obama was finishing up his actual address on Tuesday, Trump took to Twitter, his medium of choice for insults and criticism, to insult and criticize Obama's speech. Other than knocking the Iran deal, however, the Donald didn't say much about the content of the speech. Instead, he focused on his own experience watching it.

There you have it, folks, straight from the horse's mouth: Trump was bored. Of course, complaining about being bored is old hat for Trump. In fact, compared to some comments he's made in the past, his derision of the State of the Union was positively mild.

Trump's only other remark came earlier in the speech, when Obama was touting the Iran nuclear agreement.

Of course, this isn't news; Trump is on the record many times opposing the Iran deal. However, for reasons we'll probably never know, that was the only part of Obama's speech that compelled him to open up twitter.com and start typing.

Tweeting live TV events is one of Trump's favorite pastimes. However, it's also something at which he's been somewhat inconsistent. He was extremely active during the first Democratic debate, but then, months later, he went nearly silent when Democrats convened on the debate stage for the second time. Tuesday's event fell into the latter category. Might Trump simply be getting sick of using Twitter to — nah, that thought's not even worth considering. Trump will be talking smack on Twitter for the rest of his natural life.