State of the Union 2019: President Trump gives annual address amid border wall fight

Pinned to the white lapels of some Democratic women in the audience at President Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday night was a message: “ERA Yes.”

The buttons, worn by lawmakers including Reps. Alma Adams (D-NC) and Carolyn Maloney (D-NY), are an endorsement of the Equal Rights Amendment, which would enshrine gender equality into the US Constitution. Passed in 1972, the amendment needs to be ratified by 38 states to become law.

President Donald Trump has always liked to bring up “angel moms” — the bereaved parents or relatives of those who have died because of an “illegal alien.”

On the campaign trail in 2016, he would give speeches in front of a line of despondent parents and relatives, their shirts plastered with the faces of lost loved ones. At his State of the Union speech, Trump brought Debra Bissell, whose parents were “burglarized and shot to death in their Reno, Nevada, home by an illegal alien.” And when Trump declared a national emergency to divert military funds toward the southern border to build a wall, he had “angel moms” sitting in the audience.

“Let us work together to build a culture that cherishes innocent life,” said President Donald Trump during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday night. “And let us reaffirm a fundamental truth: All children — born and unborn — are made in the holy image of God.”

In uncharacteristically extensive comments on the subject, Trump criticized efforts to loosen abortion restrictions in New York and Virginia. He also called for federal anti-abortion legislation.

When President Donald Trump brought up the topic of trade in his State of the Union address on Tuesday, he asked Congress to approve something called the “United States Reciprocal Trade Act” — a bill many Americans have probably never heard of.

This particular piece of legislation, introduced in Congress by Rep. Sean Duffy (R-WI), is the president’s latest pet project on trade.

President Donald Trump sought to emphasize unity during his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, going so far as to say he was interested in breaking “decades of political stalemate.” But, notably, he didn’t mention that the government just came out of a 35-day shutdown, that another one could happen very soon, and that neither Congress nor Trump seem to have an idea to break a continued impasse on immigration.

His decision to skirt the issue didn’t go unnoticed among the members of Congress listening.

President Donald Trump didn’t miss a chance to vilify undocumented immigrants during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday.

Once again, he painted unauthorized immigrants as a huge burden to the United States — a burden that working-class Americans pay for. And once again, he blamed them for “a depleted social safety net.”

President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday was billed as a unifying speech — one that would bring Democrats and Republicans closer together on divisive issues.

But the speech also reminded Republicans of the bitter pill they’ve swallowed over two years: Trump’s foreign policy.

Most of the people who watched President Donald Trump’s State of the Union speech liked it.

Polls from CNN and CBS News conducted shortly after the big address found that viewers generally approved of what the president had to say. That makes sense, because generally, a greater proportion of people who watch the State of the Union address tend to be from the president’s party. In other words, of course Republican viewers thought Trump did a good job.

In his Tuesday State of the Union speech, President Trump focused on five main issues: immigration, workers, infrastructure, health care and prescription drugs, and national security.

And he squeezed in a boast about the surge in fossil fuel development in the United States. “We have unleashed a revolution in American energy — the United States is now the number one producer of oil and natural gas in the world,” Trump said. “And now, for the first time in 65 years, we are a net exporter of energy.”  

State of the Union speeches are defined by a charade: The president gives his laundry list of policy priorities, and the lawmakers watching in the House chamber promptly forget about most of them.

With the president’s constitutional duty to update the Congress on “the state of the union” met, life continues as it had before.

President Donald Trump delivered his second official State of the Union address on Tuesday. The speech was billed as a bipartisan one, though it comes amid a moment of division in Washington, DC: The president and Congress are no closer to striking a deal on immigration, government funding, and his border wall than they were just a couple of weeks ago, when they called a temporary truce to end the longest government shutdown in US history.

Trump touched on a number of topics during his State of the Union speech, including immigration, abortion, HIV, the economy, and jobs. He also announced another summit with North Korea.

“Disorder, tension, hostility.”

That’s how California Attorney General Xavier Becerra described the State of the Union Tuesday during the Democrats’ Spanish-language rebuttal to President Donald Trump’s speech.

President Donald Trump’s most famous book, The Art of the Deal, says “you can’t con people, at least not for long. You can create excitement, you can do wonderful promotion and get all kinds of press, and you can throw in a little hyperbole. But if you don’t deliver the goods, people will eventually catch on.”

It’s clear after Trump’s 2019 State of the Union that he hopes he can keep the con going a little longer. During the long speech, Trump called on the country to “reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good” — but as much as Americans might badly be looking to heal the divisions torn open by his election, his words likely sounded hollow to Americans who just lived through the longest shutdown in American history.

As recently as two weeks ago, it wasn’t clear that this State of the Union was going to happen. Amid the government shutdown and continued brinkmanship between House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and President Donald Trump on funding for a partial border wall with Mexico, “will the State of the Union happen” became a major subplot, only resolved decisively when the shutdown ended on January 25, after 34 full days.

But the government is only funded through February 15, and Trump used the speech to continue to press his case on the border wall, risking further confrontations and shutdowns in the future.

Former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams delivered the Democratic response to Trump’s State of the Union on Tuesday — and did an impressive job. State of the Union speeches are typically boring afterthoughts; Abrams’s showed why so many in the Democratic Party see her as a rising star.

But what does Abrams really stand for, and what does she really think? To get a sense, it’s worth reading an essay by her published last Friday defending one of the most controversial ideas in American public life: identity politics.

A new President Trump spoke to the country on Tuesday night, one who didn’t bring the Republican conference to its feet chanting “build that wall” but delivered a punchline that any American politician could have: “Let’s work together to compromise and reach a deal that will truly keep America safe.”

The new Trump is, to use his own favored insult, low-energy.

An impromptu “Happy Birthday” song might be one of the most memorable moments from President Donald Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address Tuesday night.

The president and first lady Melania Trump invited Judah Samet as a guest for the speech. Samet is a Holocaust survivor who also escaped the mass shooting at Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh in October 2018. Tuesday also happens to be Samet’s 81st birthday — and the House chamber broke out into song when Trump mentioned this during his speech.

I’ll be honest: There were parts of President Donald Trump’s 2019 State of the Union that I liked. But then I remembered the reality of his presidency.

I liked when he called on the country to “reject the politics of revenge, resistance, and retribution, and embrace the boundless potential of cooperation, compromise, and the common good.” But then I remembered America is only 10 days past the longest government shutdown in history, which Trump triggered when he refused to compromise or cooperate with Democrats. And I remembered that Trump’s acting chief of staff just said the president is willing to do it again.

If there is an intellectual core in President Donald Trump’s 2019 State of the Union speech, it came in the section on undocumented immigration. In it, Trump cast the country as divided between elites and the working class, with Trump on the side of the working class and Democrats as the champions of the elites.

“No issue better illustrates the divide between America’s working class and America’s political class than illegal immigration,” Trump said. “Wealthy politicians and donors push for open borders while living their lives behind walls and gates and guards. Meanwhile, working-class Americans are left to pay the price for mass illegal migration — reduced jobs, lower wages, overburdened schools and hospitals, increased crime, and a depleted social safety net.”

In the formal Democratic response to President Trump’s 2019 State of the Union speech, Stacey Abrams made the case for fundamental election reform, particularly in light of today’s dynamics in Washington.

“This is the next battle for our democracy, one where all eligible citizens can have their say about the vision we want for our country,” Abrams said. “We must reject the cynicism that says allowing every eligible vote to be cast and counted is a ‘power grab.’”

President Donald Trump tried to make the case for his border wall Tuesday during his State of the Union address by repeating a lie about violent crime along the Texas-Mexico border.

“The border city of El Paso, Texas, used to have extremely high rates of violent crime — one of the highest in the country, and [was] considered one of our nation’s most dangerous cities. Now, with a powerful barrier in place, El Paso is one of our safest cities,” Trump said.

President Donald Trump’s second formal State of the Union address on Tuesday night takes place as the president and Congress try to find a solution to avert another government shutdown on February 15. The speech was delayed two weeks amid the longest government shutdown in history, and Trump and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi are still at an impasse.

The theme of the speech is “choosing greatness,” according to a briefing Friday with administration officials. The prepared text includes this statement: “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.”

It’s been just over two months since Stacey Abrams ended her nationally watched campaign to become the next governor of Georgia, losing to Republican Brian Kemp by a narrow margin in a contest marred by voting rights controversies and Election Day issues.

But a moment that could have signified the end of her career has only increased Abrams’s prominence.

One of the biggest moments of President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address wasn’t about Trump at all.

The president, while bragging about his own record on the economy, noted high numbers of women joining the workforce.

During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, President Donald Trump claimed that his decision to pull the US out of the Iran nuclear deal and reimpose sanctions on the country has put immense pressure on the Iranian regime and stifled its regional ambitions, as well as slowed its ability to obtain a nuclear weapon.

“My administration has acted decisively to confront the world’s leading state sponsor of terror: the radical regime in Iran,” Trump said Tuesday night in front of Congress. “To ensure this corrupt dictatorship never acquires nuclear weapons, I withdrew the United States from the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. And last fall, we put in place the toughest sanctions ever imposed on a country.”