Congratulations, attention-hungry House Democrats: You stole the spotlight from Donald Trump on Tuesday night.

Your reward? Undercutting your own message in the fight against Trump, making your party look small and desperate, and making Trump look like the commanding figure he desperately wants to be.

I’ve covered a few of these spectacles over the years, but the scenes from this joint session were unlike anything I have seen before: Dozens of lawmakers heckled and booed the president. Others held up signs, many more walked out in protest. One, Rep. Al Green (D-Texas), was escorted out of the chamber after interrupting Trump, refusing to sit down and shaking his cane in outrage.

There’s a reason House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries warned his members yesterday morning to offer a “solemn” response to Trump’s address. It’s the same reason former speakers Kevin McCarthy and Nancy Pelosi also advised their members to keep their cool in previous years under different presidents.

By making a scene, members become the story — but also become an easy target. And more importantly, they take the focus away from where their party wants it — in this case, on Trump proudly owning his most controversial policies.

The president, after all, gave Democrats plenty of material to work with. He boasted about gutting the federal workforce and upending U.S. foreign alliances and agreements. He acknowledged that his tariffs, levied against some of America’s closest allies, would cause pain for farmers, a big chunk of his loyal base. (“It may be a little bit of an adjustment period,” he said. “Bear with me.”)

He admitted his vaunted Department of Government Efficiency “is headed by Elon Musk,” inadvertently undercutting his administration’s arguments in several pending lawsuits challenging DOGE’s authority to slash government programs. And while he blamed predecessor Joe Biden for the “economic catastrophe and inflation nightmare” he said he inherited, Trump barely offered any solutions to bring down prices himself — something voters of both parties say he’s not addressing enough.

Democrats, alas, couldn’t let that be the focus.

Green, known for his repeated attempts to impeach Trump, started the night off by interrupting Trump and shouting, “You have no mandate!” As Trump talked about tax cuts, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) scribbled notes to Trump on a whiteboard, telling him “start by paying your taxes.”

When Trump talked about cutting waste, fraud and abuse, Rep. Gil Cisneros (D-Calif.) shouted, “What about the $400 million Tesla contract?” Others held up signs reading “FALSE” as he ran through the litany of cuts DOGE had made to allegedly wasteful government programs.

At one point, Rep. Maxwell Frost of Florida and several other Democrats took off their jackets and walked out, their backs imprinted with messages like “RESIST” and “NO MORE KINGS.” Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.) fundraised off a photo taken of her holding a sign that read “This Is NOT Normal” as Trump walked by her.

“Hi that’s me,” she wrote on X, retweeting the image and linking to a donation page. “We will not be silent. Join me in the fight.”

Once upon a time, this sort of behavior wouldn’t have even been imagined, let alone tolerated. Sixteen years ago, the scandal du jour centered around Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouting, “You lie!” at then-President Barack Obama. More recently, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) were widely mocked after heckling Biden — and according to much of the coverage, playing right into his hands.

Last night, it wasn’t one or two members — it was too many to count.

The White House was positively giddy over the split-screen Democrats served them on a silver platter. In the moments after the speech ended, top Trump operatives were gleefully pointing out how Democrats sat stone-faced, or worse, as the president:

• Awarded an honorary Secret Service badge to a young boy with brain cancer — who dreams of becoming a police officer — his surprise and glee plastered all over his face;
• Renamed a wildlife refuge after a young girl murdered by undocumented immigrants, with her tearful mom sitting in the audience;
• Informed a young man in the gallery he’d been accepted into West Point so he could follow in the footsteps of his late father, a fallen police officer who had dedicated his life to service;
• And announced to the nation that a terrorist who allegedly helped mastermind the murder of 13 U.S. troops during the Afghanistan withdrawal was being extradited to the U.S. to face justice.

Was it Hollywood-style theatrics? Sure. But it also underscored just how powerful a platform the House rostrum can be for a president — and just how powerless the opposition is in those moments. In fact, this disadvantage is even more profound than that — the more you try to push back, the more it backfires.

As one White House ally told my colleague Dasha Burns mid-speech, Trump’s speech was “good” but Democrats are “making it look even better by behaving like petulant children.” Speaker Mike Johnson added on X: “The way the Democrats behaved was unserious and embarrassing. That contrast between our forward looking vision and their temper tantrums was on display for all of America to see.”

What was more surprising to me was that Trump, never one to resist throwing a punch, mostly refrained from rolling in the mud with the protesting Democrats — a testament, perhaps, to the influence of his strategy-minded chief of staff, Susie Wiles. (OK: He couldn’t resist a “Pocahontas” dig after spotting Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren clapping in support of Ukraine.)

One final observation: The biggest loser of all might well have been Michigan Sen. Elissa Slotkin, who was tapped to deliver the official Democratic response — and did so competently, on message and without incident — only to be overshadowed by the antics of her old House colleagues.

Green, the Democrat who kicked it all off last night, said it was all “worth it to let people know that there are some people who are going to stand up,” as he told reporters after getting escorted from the chamber.

But if Democrats think standing up and walking out is their best path back to power, rather than adopting a more strategic approach to their Trump resistance, it could be a long four years — and possibly beyond.