WASHINGTON _ President Donald Trump plans to call on the nation to "choose greatness" in what he has said will be a unifying State of the Union address Tuesday night, even as the White House privately urged allies to use the occasion to attack Democrats _ like the president himself did hours before the speech.
Trump, who has spent time in recent days huddling with speechwriter Stephen Miller and practicing his delivery, seeks to appear presidential when he steps to the rostrum in the House chamber just after 9 p.m. Eastern time for the nationally televised address. According to aides and leaked talking points, he will urge Congress to unite behind his agenda to find "common sense, bipartisan solutions."
That aspiration may be out of reach in Washington. The president will look out for the first time at a Democratic House majority after two years of supportive Republican control of Congress, and over his shoulder will be Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who already has bested Trump in their showdown over his demand for a southern border wall.
He speaks as the government is operating on a three-week funding measure that ended a 35-day partial government shutdown, and a bipartisan group of lawmakers is trying to negotiate compromise border-security measures to avert another impasse with Trump.
Yet he has called their efforts a waste of time, and complained about Congress' resistance to meeting his demand to build a border wall. He has repeatedly threatened to declare a national emergency to circumvent Congress and use existing federal funds, though after warnings from Republicans he is unlikely to make such a declaration in his address.
On Tuesday morning, even as his aides appeared on television previewing what they said would be a unifying speech, the president was venting on Twitter about Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat who declared in a Senate speech and a later tweet that "the state of the Trump administration is chaos."
"I see Schumer is already criticizing my State of the Union speech, even though he hasn't seen it yet," Trump tweeted. "He's just upset that he didn't win the Senate, after spending a fortune, like he thought he would."
While White House officials have outlined five policy themes _ immigration, trade, infrastructure, health care and national security _ and promised a less partisan tone, aides have privately encouraged surrogates and allies to hammer Democrats in the media on two issues, taxes and abortion.
"If he's going to go a little high, we've got to go a little low," said one person who attended a meeting Monday night at the White House and asked not to be identified discussing a private session. It was organized for the president's most prominent outside supporters.
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, the person said, outlined a two-pronged communications strategy, telling attendees to "be more antagonistic and more partisan than the president is going to be."
Specifically, Conway urged supporters to attack two Democratic governors, Andrew Cuomo of New York and the embattled Ralph Northam of Virginia, over late-term abortion measures in their states. Cuomo recently signed legislation allowing abortions up to the moment of birth if a health care professional determines the fetus is not viable or the mother's life is at risk, and anti-abortion activists have seized on comments from Northam, a doctor, expressing support for a similar measure in a way they view as advocating infanticide.
The president, who popped into the meeting, expressed outrage over Northam's comments, the witness said, but he did not refer to the scandal that has engulfed Northam, over his admission to dressing up in blackface decades ago and a photo on his medical school yearbook page showing someone in blackface beside another dressed as a Klansman.
Tony Perkins, president of the conservative Family Research Council, and Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony List, were among those attending. Also there were former Trump advisers including Corey Lewandowski and Sean Spicer, as well as former Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican.
All attendees were asked to leave their cellphones outside before entering the meeting, which came a day after the president's leaked private schedules were published, showing little activity.
The White House also hinted at the nation's partisan divisions with some of its choices of guests selected to sit near first lady Melania Trump, as is traditional to personify an administration's priorities and initiatives.
Among the Trump invitees is a sixth-grade boy from Delaware, Joshua Trump, whom the White House said is bullied because of his last name; he reflects Melania Trump's anti-bullying cause. Personifying the president's complaints about crimes by undocumented immigrants _ whose crime rates in fact are less than those of native-born Americans _ will be the daughter, granddaughter and great-granddaughter of Gerald and Sharon David of Reno, Nev., who were killed last month, allegedly by an immigrant from El Salvador in the country illegally.
Other guests include Grace Eline, a 9-year-old cancer survivor from New Jersey; Alice Johnson, who was granted clemency by Trump for a nonviolent drug offense after a personal appeal from celebrity Kim Kardashian; and Judah Samet, a survivor of the Holocaust and of last year's mass shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue.
Pelosi, too, has invited guests. Hers include several gun control activists, two transgender soldiers to protest Trump's efforts to ban such troops, Planned Parenthood's new president, Leana Wen, as well as celebrity chef Jose Andres, who led efforts to feed federal workers during the shutdown and Puerto Ricans devastated by Hurricane Maria in 2017. Andres has also been a sharp critic of Trump, breaking an agreement to open a restaurant in his Washington hotel after Trump, then a presidential candidate, disparaged immigrants.
