Donald Trump’s first State of the Union address is in the can. Here’s what we learned:
- The speech was long and mostly on-script, and devoid of Trumpian chaos. As expected, Trump boasted of a strong economy and tax cuts, and he called for infrastructure spending and a bipartisan deal on immigration.
- Trump used surprise guests to dramatize his confrontation with North Korea, including the family of Otto Warmbier, the late American student who was tortured, and defector Ji Seong-ho, who gave the night its most memorable image when he held his crutches aloft.
- Trump used the story of a grisly alleged gang murder of two teenage girls, whose families were in the chamber, as a shocking way to call for immigration reform. He described a path to citizenship for so-called “Dreamers”, undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, and a “great wall”, and he described a phantom scourge of “chain migration”.
- Response in the chamber was split along partisan lines, though Democrats joined in the applause at times, especially when Trump highlighted tales of military heroism. One of the strongest applause lines among Republicans was a sideswipe at NFL protesters: “We stand for the national anthem.”
- Trump sought to project optimism by describing “our new American moment”, but that tone leaked away with a long section of stories about the MS-13 gang and with calls for a nuclear buildup and an order to keep the Guantánamo Bay prison open.
