Biden extolled America. “We are the only nation on Earth that has always turned every crisis we have faced into an opportunity,” he declared. “The state of the Union is strong because you, the American people, are strong.” Trump disparaged America. “We were a smart country; now we’re a stupid country,” he said. “We are a laughingstock all over the world . . . We are a laughingstock.”

Biden asked his countrymen to put aside their differences. “Let’s stop looking at COVID-19 as a partisan dividing line and see it for what it is: a God-awful disease,” said the president. “Let’s stop seeing each other as enemies and start seeing each other for who we really are: fellow Americans.” Trump, conversely, prodded Americans to turn against one another. “Our country is being poisoned from within,” he warned, calling his domestic opponents “truly evil” and “vicious people.” “As grave as the dangers are abroad, it’s the destruction within that spells our doom,” said Trump. “Our most dangerous people are people from within.”

Biden defended the rule of law. He called for more funding of police departments, and he announced that the Department of Justice would crack down on financial fraud and “the crimes of Russian oligarchs.” Trump, on the other hand, smeared prosecutors as Democratic partisans and accused them of mistreating the January 6 insurrectionists. He suggested that “perhaps Republicans should pack the Supreme Court,” and he insisted that if Republicans regained power, they must make “every executive branch employee fireable by the president.”