Senator Elissa Slotkin, a first-term Democrat from Michigan, delivered a simple message as her party’s official response to President Trump’s combative and lengthy address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night: Mr. Trump, she said, was “going to make you pay in every part of your life.”
Ms. Slotkin, 48, fresh off a victory in a competitive race in a critical state, took up the tricky task of giving the opposing party’s answer to the annual congressional address at a moment when Democrats are struggling to find an effective message and messenger for pushing back on a president unbound.
During Mr. Trump’s address, some Democrats heckled him, others held up signs of protest and one lawmaker, Representative Al Green of Texas, was removed from the chamber for a cane-waving tirade in which he shouted that Mr. Trump had “no mandate” for his agenda and refused to sit back down.
In contrast, Ms. Slotkin struck a calm and upbeat tone in her brief remarks, working to appeal not just to Democrats but to Republicans as well by introducing herself via her national security credentials. (She noted that she served three tours in Iraq working for the C.I.A. under Republican and Democratic presidents.)
Ms. Slotkin chose to address the nation from Wyandotte, Mich., a city she noted that both she and Mr. Trump won in November. Mr. Trump’s speech was the longest presidential address in history, but Ms. Slotkin ignored most of what he said and kept a tight focus on her argument that the president’s actions and his agenda would make life more expensive for Americans.
“Your premiums and prescriptions will cost more, because the math on his proposals doesn’t work without him going after your health care,” she said. She noted that “Elon Musk just called Social Security the biggest Ponzi scheme of all time.”
Ms. Slotkin said she agreed with the idea of cutting government waste. “I’ll help you do it,” she said. “But change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.”
Twice during her speech, she named previous Republican presidents approvingly while criticizing Mr. Trump. “I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in the office in the 1990s,” she said, noting that Mr. Trump was “cozying up to dictators like Vladimir Putin.”
Ms. Slotkin said that Mr. Trump “clearly doesn’t think we should lead the world.”
She also had a message for demoralized Democrats: “Don’t tune out. It’s easy to be exhausted,” she said, warning that democracy itself was at risk.
“I’ve seen democracies flicker out,” she said. “I’ve seen what life is like when a government is rigged. You can’t open a business without paying off a corrupt official. You can’t criticize the guys in charge without getting a knock on the door in the middle of the night.”
Ms. Slotkin urged Democrats who felt lost to choose one issue they care about and get singularly involved with it. “Doomscrolling doesn’t count,” she said.
Ms. Slotkin, a center-leaning Democrat who worked as a C.I.A. analyst and in national security posts in the White Houses of Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, has had her entire political career defined in opposition to Mr. Trump. She first won her House seat in 2018 as part of a tight-knit group of Democratic women with military or intelligence backgrounds who were recruited to run as a counterweight to the president.
The job of the televised response is often seen as a springboard for politicians to raise their profiles, and Ms. Slotkin reached out to viewers who might not know her. But the speaking slot can also be a thankless role, one that has been botched by so many promising elected officials in both parties that it is now considered almost cursed.
Ms. Slotkin avoided any notable missteps, opting for a straightforward delivery and a simple message calibrated to be broadly appealing. But she did not take a strident tone of resistance that many Democrats have chosen amid a backlash from their core supporters, who want them to be more forceful in opposing Mr. Trump.
