President praises U.S. strength, pride
Trump delivers first State of the Union speech
WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump tried to shed the polarizing image and words that have stunted his popularity and thwarted his ability to pass bipartisan legislation, recasting himself on Tuesday as a unifying figure in his first State of the Union address.
“Tonight, 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 at the top of his 80-minute speech. “This is really the key: These are the people we were elected to serve.”
It was a striking difference in tone for a president who came into office decrying “American carnage” at his inaugural, and who has since then spoken and tweeted in harsh terms about his perceived enemies, including lawmakers of both parties and his vanquished opponent, Hillary Clinton.
Trump continued to warn against what he sees as the scourge of illegal immigration. But the warnings
were cloaked around softer descriptions of the American character, describing the nation as “one team, one people and one American family.”
As he reeled off a string of natural disasters and tragedies, including the shooting at a congressional baseball practice that nearly killed a Republican House leader, he emphasized that “we came together, not as Republicans or Democrats, but as representatives of the people.”
The speech came in what’s become a familiar spot for Trump: at a historic low in polls, furious over the Russia investigation and frustrated that he is not getting credit for a good economy and keeping his promise to shake up the government.
But the president put much of that aside, claiming credit for the booming economy as he sought to lay the groundwork for a bipartisan achievement that has eluded him — on immigration, and a major new infrastructure initiative.
Trump, like other presidents facing troubles, hoped the high-profile, nationally televised speech would help him move past the tumult in his White House and the shadow of the Russia investigation — an inquiry into his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia’s election meddling, and his own alleged acts of obstruction — that consumed his first year in office.
“This is in fact our new American moment,” Trump said. “There has never been a better time to start living the American Dream.”
Trump hammered the theme of “building a safe, strong, proud America,” which fits loosely around policy proposals for a $1.5-trillion plan to build a “safe, fast, reliable and modern infrastructure our economy needs and our people deserve”; an increase in military spending; and an overhaul of the immigration system. The immigration plan includes a call to sharply cut the number of legal immigrants while allowing a path to citizenship for young “Dreamers” who were brought to the country illegally as children.
Eleven months ago, Trump addressed Congress and a prime-time TV audience from the Capitol, but by tradition a president’s first report on the state of the union — based on a constitutional requirement — does not occur until after a year in office.
Trump spoke about the economy and his $1.5-trillion tax cut, boasting as he often does about the rising stock market and low unemployment. Those trends began in President Barack Obama’s first term, after the Great Recession, and the pace of growth actually slowed a bit in the final quarter of 2017. But that has not stopped Trump from arguing that the country would have hit the skids if he had not been elected.
In a recent Pew poll, 41 percent of Americans rated it as excellent or good, one of the strongest such ratings in a decade.
Democrats have worked aggressively to deny Trump any credit for the economy, arguing that his predecessor is responsible for the trends Trump inherited and that subsequent gains are little different from those in Obama’s final years.
“Two words I don’t think we’ll hear tonight: ‘Thanks, Obama,’ ” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said before the speech.
The recently passed tax cut law has elicited mixed expectations, according to Pew, with about a third of Americans saying they expect it to improve their personal finances, a third saying they expect it to harm them and another third expecting no change. Other polls have shown a majority of Americans believe the tax cuts favor high-earners, contradicting Trump’s promise to deliver for blue-collar workers and the middle class.