The clock is in its final, twitchy phase now. That last stretch where time stops behaving like a straight line and starts acting like a nervous animal pacing the room. In less than ten days, on February 24th, the usual choreography of American power is getting hijacked in plain sight.
Donald Trump will stand in the Capitol and deliver a State of the Union address engineered to sound like triumph, stability, destiny. The lights will be perfect. The applause will be preloaded. The words will be heavy with self-congratulation and light on reality. And while that speech oozes through the official channels, something else will be happening a few blocks away that refuses to wait its turn.
Inside the National Press Club, the building where American political reality is usually softened, filtered, and politely explained, State of the Swamp will kick the door open and speak at the same time. Not after. Not the next morning. Not once the damage is already baked into the headlines. Simultaneous. Live. Loud. Unavoidable.
This is not a protest huddled outside the gates. This is not a reaction video posted hours later for people who already agree. This is counter-programming with teeth. This is a rebuttal staged inside the press’s own cathedral, daring the media ecosystem to acknowledge that the official story is no longer enough.
Here are the people who will be showing up that night:
Robert De Niro, a man who has spent years turning Trump into a public art project titled Unacceptable. Mark Ruffalo, who knows how to channel fury without losing the crowd. Stacey Abrams, whose presence alone is a reminder of how hard democracy has to fight just to breathe. Jim Acosta, Mehdi Hasan, Brian Karem, Charlie Sykes, Wajahat Ali—journalists who have spent years asking questions power hates and refusing to apologize for it. Joyce Vance, Glenn Kirschner, Norm Eisen—legal minds who understand exactly how thin the guardrails have become. Ron Wyden, Steve Bullock, Seth Moulton, Dan Goldman, Joe Walsh—political figures who didn’t accidentally wander into this moment. They chose it.
Add Miles Taylor, Olivia Troye, Stephanie Grisham, Sue Gordon, Latosha Brown, Tara McGowan, George Conway, Tom Arnold, Marianne Williamson, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, Rashad Robinson, Lisandra Vazquez, Abbe Lowell, Asha Rangappa, Steve Schmidt, and yes, Robby Roadsteamer—the wild card, the street-level jolt of reality that keeps this from drifting into polite punditry—and what you get is not a panel. You get a collision.
This is a lineup designed to short-circuit indifference. Actors who pull cameras. Journalists who pull receipts. Former insiders who pull back the curtain. Organizers who pull people into motion. Satire, seriousness, anger, laughter, and strategy packed into the same room on purpose.
And the Portland frogs are coming with them.
Not as a joke. As a warning. Last year, when Trump labeled protesters “terrorists” and reached for federal force, ridicule proved more effective than fear. Frog suits broke the script. Mockery collapsed the justification. Power hates being laughed at because laughter exposes how brittle it really is. That symbolism is walking straight into the National Press Club now, daring the press to treat it as anything other than legitimate political speech.
That venue is the masterstroke. The National Press Club is where administrations go to feel safe. It’s where narratives get normalized. It’s where power expects deference dressed up as professionalism. Holding State of the Swamp there is not subtle. It’s a declaration that this rebuttal belongs in the same room as the official story. That it deserves the same cameras, the same attention, the same gravity.
This isn’t a sideshow running parallel to the State of the Union. It’s an attempt to seize the same oxygen. To deny Trump the luxury of an uninterrupted monologue. To remind the country that reality does not have to wait for permission.
The LIVESTREAM of the main event will be FREE and open to the public. Register here.
This post has been syndicated from CLOSER TO THE EDGE, where it was published under this address.