March 5 (UPI) — The policies enacted by President Donald Trump during his first six weeks in the White House are not only making Americans poorer but also less safe, Sen. Elissa Slotkin said Tuesday night, as she characterized the Trump government as chaotic while moving the country away from its democratic principles.
Slotkin, D-Mich., spoke to the nation from Wyandotte, located just south of Detroit, as she gave the Democrats’ response to Trump’s 1 1/2-hour-long speech before a joint session of Congress, which had ended only moments earlier.
Against a backdrop of American flags, Slotkin acknowledged that with the last election, which Trump won, the U.S. public expressed a desire for change and a government responsive to their needs, but she asserted that there is “a responsible way to make change and a reckless way.”
“We can make change without forgetting who we are as a country and as a democracy,” she said.
Slotkin suggested that the United States under Trump was moving away from its values that both Democrats and Republicans once shared, including strong national security, a robust middle class and a democracy that is “unparalleled and worth fighting for.”
Speaking from the blue-collar city she and Trump both won, Slotkin attempted to embody that America, stating her parents weren’t of the same party — her dad a Republican and her mom a Democrat — but it wasn’t an issue “because we had shared values that were bigger than any party.”
Trump, she said, “talked a big game” when it comes to the economy but his policies only help rich Americans. She said Trump was trying to to “deliver an unprecedented giveaway to his billionaire friends,” while describing the controversial effort by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency seeking wasteful federal spending as “a hunt to find trillions of dollars to pass along to the wealthiest in America.”
“You want to cut waste? I’ll help you do it,” she said.
“But change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe. The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer, only to rehire them two days later. No CEO in America could do that without being summarily fired.”
As Democrats have focused criticism on Musk and his mass firings of federal workers, while seemingly arbitrarily canceling programs, she attacked the world’s richest man by warning the public that he might go after their federal benefits.
She also chastised Trump over his handling of the border, stating his crackdown on migrants illegally entering the country was “dealing with the symptom and not the disease” as he does not have a plan to fix the immigration system.
She linked the issue of immigration with national security by stating the world is interconnected on issues such as migration and to confront them, diplomacy matters.
Returning to the theme of an America where both parties agree on fundamental principles, she said former Republican President Ronald Reagan would be “rolling in his grave” over Trump’s Oval Office meeting last week with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Trump last week got into a heated argument with Zelensky as his administration seeks a quick end to the war with Russia, seemingly at any cost, while Ukraine has stated it will only enter peace negotiations if given security guarantees. Opponents have characterized Trump’s approach to ending the war as capitulating to Russia.
“Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity. And that scene in the Oval Office wasn’t just a bad episode of reality TV — It summed up Trump’s whole approach to the world. He believes in cozying up to dictators like [Russian President] Vladimir Putin and kicking our friends like the Canadians in the teeth,” she said, referring to the 25% tariffs Trump had imposed on Ottawa imports earlier that day.
“As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War,” she continued. “Donald Trump’s actions suggest that in his heart, he doesn’t believe we’re an exceptional nation.”
Slotkin was elected to the Senate in 2024 — one of four Democrats to win in states Trump took in the election. She moved to the Senate after winning three terms in the U.S. House of Representatives, having flipped a long-held Republican seat in 2018.
Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., called her “a rising star” of the Democratic Party when he announced last week that she was to give the party’s response to Trump’s speech.
“She will offer a bold vision of hope, unity and a brighter future for everyone, not just the wealthy few at the top,” Schumer said in a statement.
Like the city she comes from and the family she was born into, her previous profession of working in the CIA continues the theme of country before party that she conveyed in her speech.
She said she joined public service because she was in New York City for 9/11 and served three tours in Iraq, as well as held national security roles at the Pentagon and White House under both Democratic and Republican administrations — those of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama.
