Talk about saying the quiet part out loud! While most of America is still basking in the afterglow of President Trump's masterful address to Congress Tuesday night, a delicious hot mic moment that happened right before the speech deserves some attention.
House Speaker Mike Johnson and Vice President JD Vance were caught in an unguarded moment as they took their positions behind the president's podium—a traditional staging that puts the vice president and speaker directly behind the commander in chief during these addresses.
What they didn't realize? The microphones were already live.
"By the way, I think the speech is going to be great... but I don't know how you do this for 90 minutes," Vance remarked to Johnson, apparently concerned about standing for the duration of Trump's anticipated remarks.
Johnson's response was pure gold.
“The hardest thing was doing it during Biden,” he said, “when the speech was a stupid campaign speech.”
He then noticed the active microphone and quickly tilted it downward.
THIS IS GOLD! 😂
— George (@BehizyTweets) March 5, 2025
VP Vance: By the way, I think the speech is going to be great, but I don't know how you do this for 90 minutes.
Speaker Johnson: The hardest thing was doing it during Biden when the speech was a stupid campaign speech... *turns mic away* pic.twitter.com/lCmqqdOkI4
Indeed, Joe Biden’s speech last year was notoriously awful. Biden embraced an angry, partisan tone, delivering what may have been the most divisive State of the Union address in history, only to have the audacity to claim at the end he would "always be a president for all Americans."
Even some in the media couldn’t deny the problems with speech. From the tone to Biden’s slurring to the gaffes, it was an epic disaster. And even they were taken aback at how partisan it was.
Veteran political analyst John King said he had never heard a more political State of the Union, while MSNBC’s Lawrence O’Donnell was stunned by Biden’s unprecedented direct attack on the Supreme Court.
Related: Democrats Will Be Panicking Over This CNN Poll of Trump's Speech
Even David Axelrod, a former Obama advisor, admitted Biden’s economic boasts likely wouldn’t resonate with swing voters. Yet, despite the glaring flaws—the mumbling, the slurring, and the awkward pauses—the media still tried to spin it as a strong night for Biden.
And Johnson had to sit through it in plain view. A notable sideshow of the speech was watching his grimacing, head-shaking, and visible discomfort as Biden rambled through what most rational Americans recognized as nothing more than campaign rhetoric poorly disguised as a presidential speech.
That wasn't just political theater—Johnson's hot mic comment confirms what we all knew: Biden's addresses to Congress were nothing more than thinly veiled campaign events paid for by taxpayers.
The contrast couldn't be more stark. While Biden used his State of the Union as a blatant campaign speech, peddling his radical leftist agenda and making bogus claims about how great the economy was, Trump delivered substance, vision, and actual leadership.
And let's be honest—those 99 minutes flew by for most Americans watching at home, while Biden's much shorter 67-minute speech last year felt like an eternity of leftist drivel.
President Trump's speech to a joint session of Congress has radical Democrats in panic mode, and their childish protests won't stop all of the winning.
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