Former NBC News journalist Luke Russert said that when he heard President Biden exclaim “go get ’em” at the end of his first State of the Union on Tuesday, he recognized the phrase. 

“My father used to say ‘Go get ‘em!’ ” Russert wrote in a tweet referencing his late father, a longtime host of “Meet The Press.” “It’s an Rust Belt Irish Catholic kind of way of saying, ‘Give ‘em hell!’ It’s not meant to go after Putin, it’s more of a ‘let’s go forward, try hard and win America!’ ”

Biden concluded his address to the nation by ad-libbing the final line. 

“The State of the Union is strong — because you, the American people, are strong. We are stronger today than we were a year ago. And we will be stronger a year from now than we are today. Now is our moment to meet and overcome the challenges of our time. And we will, as one people. One America. The United States of America,” Biden said as part of his prepared remarks. “May God bless you all. May God protect our troops.” 

“Go get ’em,” the president added. 

The exclamation caused speculation instantly on Twitter. Biden had spent a large portion of the front end of his speech blasting Russian President Vladimir Putin for his recent invasion of Ukraine and, in another ad-libbed line, said the Russian leader had “no idea” what was coming in terms of a response from the Western world. 

“He thought the West and NATO wouldn’t respond. And he thought he could divide us at home. Putin was wrong. We were ready. Here is what we did,” Biden said.

“We prepared extensively and carefully. We spent months building a coalition of other freedom-loving nations from Europe and the Americas to Asia and Africa to confront Putin,” Biden added. 

“I spent countless hours unifying our European allies. We shared with the world in advance what we knew Putin was planning and precisely how he would try to falsely justify his aggression. We countered Russia’s lies with truth. And now that he has acted the free world is holding him accountable.”