Click to watch replay of State of the Union address
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump leaned hard on the strong U.S. economy as he made the case for his reelection in the State of the Union address — and he threw in a few theatrical flourishes.
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Trump has often seemed to conduct his presidency as the ultimate reality TV show. He understands drama and suspense. He plays to emotions. He never seems to tire of the camera and attention.
But even for him, the production of this State of the Union speech, just as he begins to aggressively campaign for a second term, was taken to a level beyond any predecessor.
He told a young girl she would get a scholarship to attend a better school. He announced that a soldier had returned home to surprise his wife and children in the balcony reserved for the president’s special guests. And he dramatically asked his wife, Melania, to drape the Medal of Freedom around the neck of conservative radio stalwart Rush Limbaugh.
The speech was hardly memorable. The stagecraft won’t soon be forgotten.
IT’S STILL THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Trump delivered his speech of nearly 80 minutes without specifically mentioning the reality of one of the most consequential events of his presidency: his impeachment trial in the Senate, where he is expected to be acquitted Wednesday.
Trump made clear he is staking his re-election on the state of the economy. Deploying his penchant for superlatives, Trump said the American economy had never been stronger. The subtext was clear: He was asking voters who might not like him personally to judge him on whether they believed their own financial fortunes had improved with him as president.
His message drew from Ronald Reagan’s question to the country when he ran for re-election in 1984: Are you better off than you were four years ago?
A president who often talks about issues in terms of profit and loss also extolled the rise in the stock market and the increase in incomes of those in lower earning brackets.
“This is a blue-collar boom,” he said.
Yet Trump’s chest-thumping included some misleading stats, especially as he tried to paint the state of the U.S. economy before he took office in dismal terms. He failed to acknowledge that manufacturing has slumped in the past year, after having advanced in the prior two years. The president’s tariffs regime and slower growth worldwide hurt the sector in ways that suggest Trump’s policies robbed it of some of its previous strength.
NOT EVEN A CLAPBACK
There were no niceties. No efforts to hide the tension.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi extended a handshake to the president.
He turned away.
She gave a look.
He started into his speech.
Pelosi, wearing the white suit of the suffragettes that has become a lasting fashion statement of the House Democratic women, who swept to power in the 2018 election, stopped there with the niceties.
She delivered just a curt introduction to the president of the United States and then busied herself with paperwork. He talked.
She raised an eyebrow here, smirked some there, as Trump told the chamber, and the American people, of his accomplishments.
The speaker, whose House impeached Trump on charges of abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, didn’t need to say much more.
The House has spoken. The Senate, though, is set to acquit Trump of the two charges Wednesday.
As she presided over the chamber, Pelosi wore a gold pin shaped as the speaker’s mace, which she often puts on for times like these.
When Trump finished, Pelosi dramatically ripped a copy of the speech in half.
LIONIZING RUSH LIMBAUGH, PLAYING TO BASE
It was the kind of high drama moment that animates Trump. In a gesture that left nearly everyone — including its recipient —- looking dumbfounded, Trump announced he was giving Limbaugh the nation’s highest civilian honor.
Limbaugh, who announced this week that he had advanced lung cancer, appeared stunned, his jaw visibly dropping as Trump made the announcement. Others sat in silence as first lady Melania Trump draped the medal around his neck on the spot.
“Thank you for your decades of tireless devotion to our country,” Trump told Limbaugh, commending “all that you have done for our Nation, the millions of people a day that you speak to and that you inspire.”
Honoring Limbaugh was one of the clearest examples of Trump making yet another play to his political base. But he reminded them of many others, including his appointment of conservative judges, fervent support for gun rights, opposition to abortion and what he called defense of “religious liberty.”
“In America, we do not punish prayer. We don’t tear down crosses. We don’t ban symbols of faith,” he said. “In America, we celebrate faith.”
COUNTERPROGRAMMING
The president always commands the stage at the State of the Union, but Democrats hit the president on the issue that most voters in their party say is their top priority: health care.
And with good reason. Trump tried to label Democrats’ health care plans as “socialism” that would deprive millions of Americans of their private health insurance, a reprise of his attack on the health care plan offered by Sen. Bernie Sanders.
Democrats were prepared. They pre-emptively decried the administration’s support for a federal lawsuit that would gut President Barack Obama’s health care law. “We all want to tell the president, ‘Drop the lawsuit, drop the lawsuit, drop the lawsuit,’” Pelosi, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer and other Democratic lawmakers said in unison.
Trump also said he would always protect “pre-existing conditions” even though gutting Obamacare would do that.
A “PRESIDENT” IN WAITING
Foreign policy was a small portion of Trump’s speech. Among the surprise guests invited by the White House was Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has been seeking international help in his bid to oust Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro from office.
“Maduro is an illegitimate ruler, a tyrant who brutalizes his people. But Maduro’s grip of tyranny will be smashed and broken,” Trump said, praising Guaidó as the “true and legitimate President of Venezuela” and a “man who carries with him the hopes, dreams, and aspirations of all Venezuelans.”
In addition to offering a major public boost to Guaidó, the move also helped Trump bolster a message he has used to hit the Democratic candidates: that socialist policies are dangerous.
“Socialism destroys nations.” he said. “But always remember, freedom unifies the soul. ”
The Trump administration was among the first governments to throw its weight behind Guaidó. Yet Maduro remains in power nonetheless.
OBAMA LIVES RENT-FREE IN TRUMP’S HEAD
Trump started with an upbeat address, but could not resist criticism of his predecessor, even when the context is unclear. “If we hadn’t reversed the failed economic policies of the previous administration,” Trump said, “the world would not now be witnessing this great economic success.”
The economic recovery from the Great Recession that started in 2008 began under President Barack Obama, whose own record for job creation matched Trump’s.
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WASHINGTON (AP) — Addressing the nation in extraordinary times, President Donald Trump declared America “stronger than ever before” Tuesday night as he delivered his State of the Union address on the eve of his likely impeachment acquittal and in the aftermath of the chaotic first votes of the race to replace him.
The first president to run for reelection after being impeached, Trump received a sharply partisan welcome to the House of Representatives, with some Republicans chanting “Four More Years” while Democrats stood silently
“America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise and America’s future is blazing bright,” Trump declared. “In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!”
Setting a yardstick for success and then contending he’d surpassed it, Trump has gone from an inaugural address that decried “American carnage” to extolling the “Great American Comeback, claiming credit for the nation’s economic success as a chief rationale for a second term.
Republican members of Congress applauded nearly every sentence of Trump’s speech, often leaping to their feet to cheer him.
The only suspense concerned whether he would address the impeachment charges against him.
In the nationally televised speech, Trump was speaking from the House of Representatives, on the opposite side of the Capitol from where the Senate one day later was expected to acquit him largely along party lines.
Trump spent the first part of his speech highlighting the economy’s strength, including low unemployment, stressing how it has helped blue-collar workers and the middle class, though the period of growth began under his predecessor, Barack Obama.
And what Trump calls an unprecedented boom is, by many measures, not all that different from the solid economy he inherited from Obama. Economic growth was 2.3% in 2019, matching the average pace since the Great Recession ended a decade ago in the first year of Obama’s eight-year presidency. Trump had promised much higher.
The White House promised an optimistic speech that would look past the impeachment trial that has consumed Washington in favor of a recitation of accomplishments and promises. But Trump often veers from his script and may not be able to resist using the moment to claim exoneration and settle scores. And even in the moments when Trump has struck a tone of bipartisanship and cooperation, he has consistently returned to his scorched earth rhetoric within days.
Even for a Trump-era news cycle that seems permanently set to hyper-speed, the breakneck pace of events dominating the first week of February offered a singular backdrop for the president’s address. Yet Trump told TV anchors at a midday meal that his address would be “extraordinarily low key.”
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts, who has presided in the Senate over only the third impeachment trial in the nation’s history, was be on hand Tuesday night — this time in his more customary seat in the audience. Trump stood before the very lawmakers who have voted to remove him from office — and those who are expected to acquit him when the Senate trial comes to a close.
And over his shoulder, visible in nearly every camera shot, was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a frequent thorn in Trump’s side who authorized the impeachment proceedings that charged the president with abusing the power of his office to push Ukraine to investigate a political foe. Pelosi created a viral image with her seemingly sarcastic applause of the president a year ago. When Trump entered the chamber this time, he did not take her outstretched hand but it was not clear he had seen her gesture. Later, as Republicans cheered, she remained in her seat.
Trump was staring out at some of the Democrats who have been vying to take his job, although it was unclear if he would weigh in on the confusion in Iowa, where the results of Monday’s leadoff caucuses were delayed. In advance of his address, Trump tweeted that the caucus chaos showed Democrats were incompetent and should not be trusted to run the government.
Trump spent the hours before his speech tucked away at the White House, hosting network anchors for lunch while working on final drafts of the address. He entered the moment on a roll, with his impeachment acquittal imminent, his job approval numbers ticking upward and Wall Street looking strong. Aides played down the possibility that he would use the address to seek vengeance over impeachment.
“I think that this has gone on for too long and I think that, if you look at the ratings, the American people are frankly bored of it,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told Fox News early Tuesday.
In the closest historical comparison, Bill Clinton did not mention his recent impeachment when he delivered his State of the Union in 1999. In his address a year ago, Trump did remain on message, making no mention of how Pelosi had originally disinvited him from delivering the speech during the longest government shutdown in the nation’s history.
Trump aimed to spend much of the speech highlighting the economy’s strength, including low unemployment, stressing how it has helped blue-collar workers and the middle class, though the period of growth began under his predecessor, Barack Obama.And what Trump calls an unprecedented boom is, by many measures, not all that different from the solid economy he inherited from President Barack Obama. Economic growth was 2.3% in 2019, matching the average pace since the Great Recession ended a decade ago in the first year of Obama’s eight-year presidency
Trump stressed the new trade agreements he has negotiated, including his phase-one deal with China and the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement he signed last month.
While the White House said the president would have a message of unity, he also planned to spend time on issues that have created great division and resonated with his political base. He will attack the Democrats’ health care proposals for being too intrusive and again highlight his signature issue — immigration — trumpeting the miles of border wall that have been constructed.
“The United States of America should be a Sanctuary for Law-Abiding Americans – Not Criminal Aliens!” Trump is to say, according to the excerpts. “My Administration has undertaken an unprecedented effort to secure the Southern Border of the United States.”
He will also dedicate a section to “American values,” discussing efforts to protect “religious liberties” and limit access to abortion as he continues to court the evangelical and conservative Christian voters who form a crucial part of his base.
As usual, the presidential guests will reflect issues that Trump wants to highlight. The invited guests include military families, immigration officials and the former sheriff from Venezuela who fled to the United States.
The Democrats were supplying plenty of counter-programming, focusing on health care — the issue key to their takeover of the House last year. Many female Democrats were wearing white as tribute to the suffragettes, while a number in the party were wearing red, white and blue-striped lapel pins to highlight climate change, saying Trump has rolled back environmental safeguards and given free rein to polluters.
Several Democratic lawmakers, including California Rep. Maxine Waters and New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, announced in advance of the speech that they would be skipping it, with the high-profile New York freshman tweeting that she would “not use my presence at a state ceremony to normalize Trump’s lawless conduct & subversion of the Constitution.”
Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer was delivering the party’s official response and, in excerpts released ahead of the speech, was to draw a contrast between actions taken by Democrats and the president’s rhetoric.
“It doesn’t matter what the president says about the stock market,” Whitmer says. “What matters is that millions of people struggle to get by or don’t have enough money at the end of the month after paying for transportation, student loans, or prescription drugs.”
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WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump will deliver his State of the Union address Tuesday night on the eve of his likely impeachment acquittal and in the aftermath of the chaotic first votes of the race to replace him.
Trump is the first president to run for reelection after being impeached. He’s expected to use his prime-time speech to lay out his case for a second term amid suspense about whether he’ll address the charges against him.
Trump will speak in the well of the House of Representatives on the opposite side of the Capitol from where the Senate the next day is expected to acquit him largely along party lines.