Big moments from Trump’s State of the Union address
President Donald Trump delivered his first State of the Union address in a divided Washington on Tuesday night. Here are some takeaways:
Call for unity
From the start, it was clear Trump wanted his speech to be remembered as a call for bipartisanship, a high-minded missive about common ground.
“We must reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution — and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good,” Trump said. “Together, we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make. We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction.”
This language completely glosses over the last threeand-a-half years. Whatever you think of Trump’s politics, he has pursued a divisive political strategy very much focused on his base. Many of the “divisions” and “wounds” predated him, yes, but he has exacerbated them with an unyielding, uncompromising and controversial style that relies on fomenting culture wars and humiliating those who run afoul of him.
Democrats will see this as a thoroughly convenient evolution, now that they control the House and Trump needs them. Trump has tried this kind of language before, and he’s never maintained the posture for long.
No demand for wall
The unity-and-bipartisanship call was always going to be a difficult circle to square given the events of the past month and a half. The 35-day shutdown that Trump forced for borderwall funding is over, but the issue is not settled, and the two sides appear as entrenched as ever ahead of their Feb. 15 deadline.
A big question going into Tuesday was how much Trump would press for the wall. He did ... but only kind of.
While Trump emphasized the wall in a substantial section of the speech, he didn’t talk about it in terms of an ultimatum. Instead, he pitched it as something that he wanted. “In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall — but the proper wall never got built,” Trump said. “I’ll get it built.”
Trump added: “It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need, and as these agents will tell you, where walls go up, illegal crossings go way down.”
He did not address whether he’ll declare a national emergency to try and build it, which is controversial even among Republicans.
Withdrawal talk
Trump’s planned withdrawals from both Afghanistan and Syria are in something of a state of flux, in large part because of concerns among military brass and Republicans about pulling out too quickly and leaving a vacuum. The Senate even voted to rebuke Trump.
In his speech, Trump provided a couple brief nods to his previously expressed intentions. “As a candidate for president, I pledged a new approach,” he said. “Great nations do not fight endless wars.”
He added: “Now, as we work with our allies to destroy the remnants of ISIS, it is time to give our brave warriors in Syria a warm welcome home.”
This isn’t the same as Trump saying, “We’re withdrawing by such-and-such date,” and as with many of Trump’s expressed plans, it’s subject to change. But he decided to include this in this most important of speeches for a reason.
Areas for compromise?
While bipartisanship will be a tough sell over the next two years, given the last two years and the 2020 presidential campaign already getting off the ground, Trump did highlight two areas where logic suggest it’s at least possible: Infrastructure and drug prices.
“Both parties should be able to unite for a great rebuilding of America’s crumbling infrastructure,” Trump said, rekindling a long-promised effort that thus far hadn’t been prioritized by the GOP-controlled Congress of the past two years.
He added of prescription drugs: “It is unacceptable that Americans pay vastly more than people in other countries for the exact same drugs, often made in the exact same place,” Trump said. “This is wrong, unfair, and together we can stop it.”
Trump has hit on these themes before. Whether the two sides take either of them up will tell us whether there’s any hope for truly bipartisan legislation in 2019. They are the starting points if he meant much of what he said Tuesday.