Sen. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., blasted President Donald Trump’s foreign policy agenda Tuesday after the president addressed Congress, claiming that Trump would have lost the Cold War if he’d been president in the 1980s.
Slotkin’s remarks come after Trump delivered an address to a joint session of Congress Tuesday in a speech similar to the annual State of the Union, where he declared that “America is back” and that the “American dream is surging.”
“We all want an end to the war in Ukraine, but Reagan understood that true strength required America to combine our military and economic might with moral clarity,” said Slotkin, who was tapped to deliver the official Democratic Party response to Trump’s address. “As a Cold War kid, I’m thankful it was Reagan and not Trump in office in the 1980s. Trump would have lost us the Cold War.”
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President Donald Trump addressed members of Congress, March 5, 2025, where he discussed plans to end the war in Ukraine. (Kent Nishimura/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Slotkin zeroed in on Trump’s tense Friday exchange with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, where Trump and Vice President JD Vance sparred with Zelenskyy over whether diplomacy was the best avenue to bring peace to end the conflict.
Trump and Vance said Zelenskyy wasn’t grateful to the U.S., and the exchange stalled peace negotiations to end the war in Ukraine and put a pause on a rare-earth minerals deal between Washington and Kyiv.
However, Trump revealed in his speech to Congress Tuesday that Ukraine was ready to resume peace negotiations, and was ready to sign a minerals agreement that would allow the U.S. access to Ukraine’s minerals in exchange for U.S. support in the country.
While Trump has touted he seeks to achieve peace through strength, a term coined by former President Ronald Reagan, Reagan must be “rolling in his grave” following the “spectacle” between Trump and Zelenskyy in the Oval Office, Slotkin said.
Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who worked at the Pentagon and the White House under both the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations, also attacked the administration’s efforts to whittle down the federal government workforce.
“The mindless firing of people who work to protect our nuclear weapons, keep our planes from crashing, and conduct the research that finds the cure for cancer — only to re-hire them two days later? No CEO in America could do that without being summarily fired,” Slotkin said.
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Sen. Elissa Slotkin previously served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives before she became a member of the Senate in 2025. (Reuters)
The Trump administration sent a memo in February instructing agencies across the federal government to launch plans for “large-scale reductions in force” and construct reorganization plans by mid-March.
Slotkin did signal that Republicans and Democrats should work together on immigration, after Trump touted Tuesday that his administration has “launched the most sweeping border and immigration crackdown in American history.”
“Every country deserves to know who and what is coming across its border. Period,” Slotkin said. “Democrats and Republicans should all be for that.”
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On Tuesday, Trump said that he’d sent Congress a detailed funding request laying out how to eliminate threats and carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history,” and urged Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-La., and Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., to pass such a measure so he could sign it into law quickly.
Slotkin also encouraged U.S. citizens to remain engaged and hold their elected officials accountable — a task she described as “American as apple pie.”
“Hold your elected officials, including me, accountable,” Slotkin said. “Watch how they’re voting. Go to town halls and demand they take action.”
