About an hour before President Donald Trump was scheduled to deliver his second State of the Union address and third speech to Congress, his first since Democrats took the House in November’s midterm elections, the Times ran an account of a private lunch held at the White House for news anchors, during which he mocked Democrats including Chuck Schumer (“a nasty son of a bitch”), Joe Biden (“Biden was never very smart. He was a terrible student”), and Elizabeth Warren (“I hope I haven’t wounded Pocahontas too badly”).

The familiar hollowness of the State of the Union, joined in the past two years by the novel absurdity of Trump standing at the dais, has been compounded this time around by rote calls for unity—routinely made by Presidents chastened by midterm losses—from the mouth of an insult-loving President whose differences with his political opponents are morally irreconcilable. “Together, we can break decades of political stalemate,” he said. “We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future.” The White House expects the unlocking of America’s future to begin on Friday, at an unusual bipartisan summit of lawmakers hosted by the White House’s acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney, at Camp David. The President will not be there.

Trump’s speech comes on the heels of a shutdown that alienated members of his own party, appalled the country, and cast the state of the State of the Union in doubt—all told, an unqualified victory for Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats, who were all smiles in the chamber Tuesday night before the President arrived. The women of the House Democratic caucus, dressed in stark suffragette white, posed for cheery selfies. Among the members of the Senate were leading figures of the most robust Presidential field the Democratic Party has produced in some time—Cory Booker, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris, and Kirsten Gillibrand. Bernie Sanders, one of the last top-tier candidates yet to announce, will deliver a live-streamed response to the President’s address after an official response by Stacey Abrams, now a potential candidate for the Senate in 2020, and one of the Party’s rising stars. Trump is entering the second half of his first term surrounded, eclipsed, and frustrated by a Party surging with energy. None of his bluster tonight can occlude that.