GOP defense hawks hope President Donald Trump will use the first State of the Union address of his second term to fill out the details of his national security agenda as he seeks to overhaul the way the United States projects power globally.
Many Republican lawmakers desire less saber-rattling abroad and more concrete information on Trump’s sweeping domestic defense priorities, such as his calls for a $1.5 trillion military budget and how he plans to rebuild the domestic industrial base. We scooped on Monday how the Pentagon wants to spend $150 billion from the One Big Beautiful Bill before the end of FY2026, a stunning move that would have a huge impact on the U.S. defense industrial base.
“I certainly hope he’s not going to say he wants to acquire another country,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said. “I hope that we’re beyond those discussions. I would like a little more specificity and clarity in terms of some of the [defense] initiatives that he has already announced.”
Trump has often boasted falsely of having ended eight wars as he publicly sought the Nobel Peace Prize last year. He’s done so even as the United States captured former Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro, threatened to take Greenland by force and hinted at possible strikes on Iran.
“Wages are climbing faster than inflation. Gas prices are down. He’s working on pharmaceutical costs. That should be — if I was him, that’s how you win, right?” Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.) said. ”He likes to exaggerate about how many wars he stopped, and it doesn’t play too well.”
There’s also some hope that Trump will focus on a message of national unity rather than stoking further division about U.S. actions overseas.
“We’ve done a lot of our core agenda,” Sen. Tim Sheehy (R-Mont.) said. “It’s time to lower the temperature and try to bring people together.”
Dual focus. Defense hawks on Capitol Hill have rejoiced at the news of Trump’s push for a 50% increase in Pentagon funding. And they’re eager to hear Trump underscore the need for that investment later Tuesday.
Rep. Rob Wittman (R-Va.) anticipates Trump will outline “his effort to refashion the defense budget to put a significant amount of additional resources into it.”
“I think he’ll talk about what he is doing to modernize the military, what he is doing to counter the building threats from our pacing adversaries,” Wittman added.
Rep. Trent Kelly (R-Miss.) said he wants Trump to talk about his defense funding aspirations, but added, “I hope he says them in ways that make sense to the American people.” Rather than saying $1.5 trillion, for example, Kelly said he wants Trump to talk about defense spending as a percentage of gross domestic product and how current spending compares to past decades of military investment.
“The dollar figure doesn’t matter as much as the percent of GDP, so hopefully he’ll articulate it that way,” Kelly said.
