AZ Political Podcast: Who won the 2026 State of the Union address – Trump or Democrats?

How did President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech, delivered Tuesday night in front of Congress, affect his fellow Republicans’ electoral chances in this all-important midterm year?

Could the topics in his State of the Union address — affordability and immigration — that helped propel Trump back into the White House cause his party to crash this year?

How did (and will) this State of the Union affect the state of Arizona — and the state of Arizona politics?

Will it help the Republicans or the Democrats seeking statewide office — like those going for governor? How about federal races like the contest in Arizona’s 1st Congressional District?

That’s the focus of this week’s AZ Political Podcast

Two plugged-in politicos — Democratic consultant Stacy Pearson of Lumen Strategies and Republican strategist Stan Barnes of Copper State Consulting — help me sort through the 2026 State of the Union address, viewing it from opposite sides of the aisle.

Pearson and Barnes scrutinize the important topics of:

• Affordability, one of two issues that sank Democrats in 2024 (and could be plaguing the GOP this year).
• Immigration (the other big issue).
• Whether border security and the actions of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement can be separated (one being a win, the other, not so much).
• Those omnipresent data centers and their effect on our power bills.
• The cost of gas.
• Whether members of Congress should be allowed to trade stocks with the insider knowledge their jobs afford them.

Trump tackled each and every one of those topics on Tuesday night in what turned out to be the longest State of the Union address in U.S. history. (Clocking in at more than twice the runtime of this week’s AZ Political Podcast, in case you’re keeping track.)

This podcast is available at KTAR.com, the KTAR News app and everywhere you get your podcasts.

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