Union in uneasy state
Trump sowing seeds of uncertainty, while making promises it’s unclear he can deliver.
Given his history it’s hard to believe anything President Donald Trump said in his second State of the Union address will turn out better than promises he made a year ago that have failed to materialize.
Trump laid out a $1.5 trillion infrastructure plan in his 2018 State of the Union speech that was supposed to be primarily funded by the private sector. Neither Congress nor corporate America was ever sold on the idea. The plan had flaws, and the president never spent the political capital needed to make it better.
A year ago Trump said “my administration has met extensively with both Democrats and Republicans to craft a bipartisan approach to immigration reform.” Instead of reform Trump has spent an inexcusable amount of time trying to keep a promise that right-wing pundits say he must fulfill to prevent his political base from falling apart: Build a wall on the U.S. border with Mexico.
Trump shut down parts of the government for 35 days to try and get his wall only to be thwarted by the Democratic majority in the House. While he didn’t threaten another shutdown Tuesday night, he still wants the wall. Trump announced he plans to send another 3,700 soldiers to the southern border to stop another wave of Central American refugees from entering the United States. He again called for “the proper wall” that has never been built.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi adamantly opposed a wall, but Trump continues to fight for it for two reasons. It appeases his base, whose fear of immigrants is being exploited to plot Trump’s political future, and it distracts from how Trump is sabotaging institutions Americans have depended on for years to protect us from real enemies that threaten our way of life.
Trump’s legerdemain was on full display Monday when he announced in a tweet his nomination of former oil and gas industry lobbyist David Bernhardt to become interior secretary. The media were focused on his upcoming State of the Union message. So the timing muted reaction to it.
Bernhardt has been serving as acting secretary ever since Ryan Zinke resigned in December amid ethics investigations. But he should not be in charge of an agency founded in 1849 to “protect America’s Great Outdoors.” As Kieran Suckling, executive director of the Center for Biological Diversity, explained: “Bernhardt got this nomination as a reward for months of work cramming America’s natural heritage into a wood chipper.”
Trump’s constant sniping at America’s intelligence agencies looks like another sleight-of-hand trick. Maybe the Mueller investigation can tell us why Trump said his intelligence chiefs “should go back to school” because they disagreed with his assessment that U.S. troops can leave Syria now that ISIS supposedly has been defeated. Does he want to hand over Syria’s future to Russia?
Trump also touted his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, saying they will meet again on Feb. 27-28 in Vietnam. Trump said if he weren’t president the U.S. would right now “be in a major war with North Korea.” He totally disregarded U.S. intelligence reports saying North Korea’s nuclear missile program has not stopped.
Titled “Choosing Greatness,” Trump’s speech Tuesday night was his first joint address to Congress since Pelosi took back the speaker’s post. Whether Trump accomplishes anything on his list will depend on he and Pelosi putting the border wall fight behind them to find bipartisan solutions in other areas.
Trump mentioned some of those areas in his speech, including, again, infrastructure: “Both parties should be able to unite for a great rebuilding of America’s crumbling infrastructure. Does he mean it this time, or will all his talk about working with Democrats once again fade like morning fog when political expediency turns his head?
It was clear that Trump had in mind arguably the most loyal segment of his base, evangelical Christians, when he promised to seek legislation making so-called lateterm abortions illegal, comparing the medical procedure to an execution.
Stoking the fire of an issue that divides not just political parties but families and friends suggests Trump’s political ambitions will take precedence over any grand statements about bipartisanship. That means the state of the union is in for a bumpy ride.