Trump: Everything is better – thanks to me!
He hails the booming economy and ‘proud America’
DONALD Trump painted an upbeat picture of an America where jobs are returning and stock markets soaring in his first State of the Union address.
A year after devoting his inaugural speech to the ‘American carnage’ of rusting factories, high crime and gang warfare, the US President hailed a booming economy as his biggest success.
Before Congress he welcomed a ‘new American moment’, insisting he was ‘extending an open hand’ to Democrats to work together to rebuild infrastructure and reform immigration.
‘Exciting progress is happening every day,’ he said to Republican applause. ‘Together, we are rediscovering the American way.’
The magnanimous tone was notably different to the strong stance he is known for on Twitter. Mr Trump also avoided attacking favourite targets such as Hillary Clinton, the media and the FBI.
Instead, he said his administration was building a ‘safe, strong and proud America’ during a calm and statesmanlike 80-minute speech which was expected to have been watched by 40million Americans.
‘I call upon all of us to set aside our differences, to seek out common ground and to summon the unity we need to deliver for the people,’ he said. ‘This is our new American moment. There has never been a better time to start living the American dream.’
However, after 12 months of bloody divisions in Washington, his call for unity met with stony silence from the Democrats. Most of them did not applaud, while some even hissed when he promised to clamp down on the number of family members that immigrants could bring in.
The President made no mention of the controversy over Russian interference in the 2016 election and his speech was low on new policy announcements.
However he did stir the pot on North Korea, making another fiery attack on the rogue state just days before the Winter Olympics start in South Korea. He condemned the country’s leadership as ‘depraved’ and warned that North Korea would ‘very soon’ threaten the US with nuclear missiles.
Mr Trump has complained bitterly that he doesn’t get enough credit for the rebounding US economy – although critics insist that it’s little of his doing. In the speech, delivered early yesterday, he talked of his administration’s ‘extraordinary success’.
He championed the virtues of tax cuts he and the Republicans pushed through late last year, saying they had already brought tax bonuses for millions of workers.
He also celebrated his administration’s determination to cut red tape holding back business and said the US had gained an extra 2.4million jobs since he entered the White House. The US unemployment rate is at a 17-year low. Mr Trump’s discussion of immigration proved the most controversial part of his speech.
He was accused of trying to paint all ‘Dreamers’ – young illegal immigrants brought to the US as children – as violent gangsters as he dwelt on the appalling crimes of MS-13, a notorious Central America-based gang.
He laid out a compromise deal in which he would offer Dreamers a path to citizenship in return for Congress agreeing to pay for his controversial wall along the border with Mexico. Mr Trump challenged Democrats to reject what he called a ‘down-the-middle compromise’ on immigration where ‘nobody gets everything they want, but where our country gets the critical reforms it needs’.
He added: ‘For over 30 years, Washington has tried and failed to solve this problem. This Congress can be the one that finally makes it happen.’ The President pledged to bring Republicans and Democrats together around a $1.5trillion infrastructure investment plan to ‘give us the... modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve’.
As he emotively talked up American greatness, Mr Trump made heavy use of ordinary people who had been invited so he could praise their achievements.
They included a New Mexico police officer and his wife who adopted the baby of a heroinaddicted mother, and a North Korean defector who overcame appalling hardships and now helps other defectors.
‘The state of our union is strong because our people are strong,’ said Mr Trump.
Massachusetts congressman Joseph Kennedy III, a greatnephew of John F Kennedy, delivered the official Democratic response to the President’s address. He accused the administration of abandoning the fundamental values for which the US stands, notably ‘the belief that we are all worthy, we are all equal and we all count’.
He said that ‘hatred and suprem-
‘We are rediscovering the American way’ ‘Avoided his own failures’
acy’ were ‘proudly marching in our streets’, Russia was ‘knee-deep in our democracy’ and the Justice Department was ‘rolling back civil rights by the day’.
Despite the rosy state of the US economy, just 37 per cent of Americans approve of Mr Trump’s performance as president.
However Republicans welcomed his immigration proposals, with US Senator James Lankford of Oklahoma saying the President tried to strike a middle ground.
‘Democrats can say he didn’t move enough, but you can’t deny he moved a lot,’ he said. ‘There are people in his core base who think he has moved way too far.’
But Senator Patrick Leahy, a Vermont Democrat and the longest-serving senator, said Mr Trump’s words about unity ‘rang hollow’ after a ‘divisive’ year.
American financial markets remained largely stable in the wake of the speech. Tim Ghriskey, from Cresset Wealth Advisors in Chicago, said of the address: ‘He avoided his own failures.’