{"id":41240,"date":"2026-02-27T12:03:42","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T17:03:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/?p=41240"},"modified":"2026-03-27T16:10:36","modified_gmt":"2026-03-27T20:10:36","slug":"politics-expert-nelsen-reacts-to-state-of-the-union-address","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/politics-expert-nelsen-reacts-to-state-of-the-union-address\/","title":{"rendered":"Politics expert Brent Nelsen reacts to State of the Union address"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Furman University&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/people\/brent-nelsen\/\">Brent Nelsen<\/a>, a regular guest on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.foxcarolina.com\/video\/2026\/02\/25\/political-analyst-goes-depth-state-union-speech\/\">FOX Carolina News<\/a>, spoke with anchor Justin Dougherty following President Trump&#8217;s State of the Union address Feb. 24.<\/p>\n<p>Nelsen, the Jane Fishburne Hipp Professor of Politics and International Affairs, commented on key talking points in the nearly two-hour speech. He noted that the midterm election season likely shaped President Trump&#8217;s approach where he &#8220;baits the opposition,&#8221; drawing jeers from one side of the chamber. Nelsen commented on the build-up of weaponry outside Iran and the mystery surrounding U.S. goals there, as well as Trump&#8217;s tariff policy and how the president will move forward in light of the Supreme Court&#8217;s ruling.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Furman politics expert Brent Nelsen says SOTU addresses tend to be more about show than substance especially during a midterm election year. He speaks with FOX Carolina News about a range of topics including U.S. tensions with Iran and tariff policy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":257,"featured_media":26318,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1569,6,32],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-fox-carolina","category-in-the-news","category-politics-and-international-affairs"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/257"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41240"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":41707,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41240\/revisions\/41707"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26318"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41240"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41240"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41240"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}