The One Time Republicans Didn’t Cheer in Trump’s State of the Union

The only time Republicans weren’t clapping like seals during President Trump’s State of the Union address was when he spoke positively about his tariffs. 

“I used these tariffs, took in hundreds of billions of dollars to make great deals for our country, both economically and on a national security basis. Everything was working well, countries that were ripping us off for decades are now paying us hundreds of billions of dollars,” Trump said. “And yet these countries are happy, and so are we … and the big story was how Donald Trump called the economy correctly, and 22 Nobel Prize winners in economics didn’t. They got it totally wrong, they got it really wrong. And then just four days ago an unfortunate ruling from the United States Supreme Court, it just came down.” 

lmao Trump awkwardly slides into the gassing up tariffs part of his State of the Union speech. Note the lack of applause from Republicans. pic.twitter.com/D329e9R8ml

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) February 25, 2026

The room was deathly quiet for much of this awkward rant, a stark contrast given just how frequently the GOP did a standing ovation for something Trump said during his address. This is likely because many prominent Republicans actually agreed with the Supreme Court’s ruling, which stopped Trump from  further enacting his global, illegal “Liberation Day” tariffs. 

“Today, the Supreme Court reaffirmed authority that has rested with Congress for centuries. The American people already know that tariffs make building and buying here at home more expensive,” Senator Mitch McConnell said after the ruling on Friday. “And Kentuckians understand this painful reality better than most. But the use of IEEPA to circumvent Congress in the imposition of tariffs, already without precedent, isn’t just bad policy—it’s also illegal.”