The mask slipped.
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger took the stage to deliver the Democratic rebuttal to President Trump’s State of the Union, and conservatives immediately pounced.
Spanberger, who campaigned as a “moderate,” framed her remarks around “affordability” and a critique of Trump’s immigration enforcement. But online reaction from the right was swift and unforgiving.
Her speech drew fire for highlighting school walkouts over ICE activity, defending her party’s economic agenda, and sharply criticizing the president.
“This Spanberger speech can basically be summed up as ‘I AM A DEMOCRAT WHO IS MODERATE AND NORMAL. PLEASE BELIEVE I AM MODERATE AND NORMAL,’” Mark Hemingway, senior writer for Real Clear Investigations, wrote on X.
“Abigail Spanberger comes off like the radical psychopath she is,” Matthew Boyle, Washington Bureau Chief for Breitbart News, posted on X. “Anyone who claims she is a ‘moderate’ is a liar. Plain and simple.”
“Abigail Spanberger campaigned as a moderate but governs as a left-wing activist,” GOP Sen. Marsha Blackburn posted on X. “There is no room for moderates in today’s Democrat party.”
“It’s despicable to hear Abigail Spanberger speak so plainly like a supposed moderate when she’s governing with a legislature that’s more akin to Gavin Newsom in California or, say, Maura Healy in Massachusetts,” Newsbusters managing editor Curtis Houck wrote on X.
“Spanberger passed exactly one test,” Ruthless podcast co-host Josh Holmes posted. “A year from now you’ll have absolutely no idea who gave the Democrat response.”
“Abigail Spanberger tanks,” Richard Grenell posted. “She’s so nervous. It’s like she didn’t practice the actual speech.”
“The focus of Abigail Spanberger’s rebuttal is ‘affordability’ as her party proposes sweeping tax hikes on nearly every sector of the Virginia economy,” Daily Caller senior editor Amber Duke wrote.
A top Republican told Fox News Digital earlier in the week that Spanberger would not have been chosen for the official rebuttal had it not been for her support for Virginia’s redistricting plan and her alignment with party leadership.
Spanberger’s sharpest moments came on immigration enforcement.
“Our president has sent poorly trained federal agents into our cities, where they have arrested and detained American citizens and people who aspire to be Americans,” she said. “They have done it without a warrant. They have ripped nursing mothers away from their babies. They have sent children — a little boy in a blue bunny hat — to far-off detention centers, and they have killed American citizens in our streets.”
“And they have done it all with their faces masked from accountability,” she continued. “Every minute spent sowing fear is a minute not spent investigating murders, crimes against children or the criminals defrauding seniors of their life savings.”
The address was meant to showcase a centrist Democrat from a competitive state. Instead, it reinforced a familiar divide: a party that speaks the language of moderation while governing in the vocabulary of the progressive left.
In politics, tone matters. So does alignment.
And last night, conservatives made clear they saw more alignment than moderation.
Watch the clip below:
The scale of this President's corruption is unprecedented.
The cover-up of the Epstein files. Crypto scams. Cozying up to billionaires for ballrooms.
It's crystal clear: the President is working for himself — not the American people. pic.twitter.com/lW0oF57fd0
— Governor Abigail Spanberger (@GovernorVA) February 25, 2026
