Nancy Pelosi may have stole the show with her tearing up Trump’s speech before leaving …
She did try to shake the guys hand but he manoeuvred around that…
I confess…
I didn’t watch the big guy…
Here’s the view from Politico ….
President Donald Trump likes his superlatives, and you have to give him credit: He definitely earned them this time.
This was the most defiant, most boastful, most ostentatiously theatrical, most overtly campaign-oriented, most am-I-hearing-this-right? outlandish—the most flamboyantly bizarre—State of the Union Address of All Time.
It was also the most disorienting, and hard to categorize through the prism of conventional political analysis. That prism already had lost much of its utility during the Trump Era, and the president seemed to shatter it completely in a 78-minute speech to a congressional audience whose fealty and contempt toward Trump were on display in equal and vivid measure.
Trump long ago lost the capacity truly to shock, but he still has tricks up his sleeve: The speech showed he still has the ability to surprise.
In particular, his speech was notable for the unapologetically zigzag quality of the messaging. The usual rubric is that national politicians face a choice of mobilization or persuasion. One choice is to energize the partisan base with sharp-edged rhetoric and cultural and ideological scab-picking. The other choice is to blur lines with round-edged appeals to voters who aren’t on board but might yet be coaxed there.
Trump refused the choice. In keeping with the more-is-more spirit of the speech, he did both.
Steak tartare a la right wing was on the menu. There were pledges to defend gun rights and fight abortion rights with a national ban on late-term abortions, repeated denunciations of “illegal aliens,” vows to “never let socialism destroy American health care.” There were eight references to God and an injunction to “remember that America has always been a Christian nation.”
Most notably, there was an invitation to broadcaster Rush Limbaugh, recently stricken with lung cancer, to stand in the gallery and be draped with the presidential Medal of Freedom by first lady Melania Trump. The president extolled Limbaugh’s “decades of devotion to our country,” as though he were a latter-day Walter Cronkite and national unifier, rather than one of the creators of the insult-laden, indignation-oriented, attack-focused brand of conservatism that gave rise to Trump.
But the speech was also replete with rhetorical outreaches designed to expand the coalition of Trump voters in this reelection year. He talked about what he has done to reduce poverty and unemployment for African-Americans and women. He sounded like any Democrat when he said, “We will always protect your Social Security and we will always protect your Medicare. Always.” He talked of increased funding for Alzheimer’s care. The denunciation of abortion was preceded by an appeal for $50 billion for neonatal research.
Impeachment was not mentioned. But it infused every aspect of the evening. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declined to welcome Trump to the House with the traditional words saying she has “the high privilege and distinct honor” to present the president. She extended her hand to him but he didn’t take it….
image…Mark Wilson/Getty
You all dislike Trump. I dislike Trump. All of that is a given.
However, the template of using the SOTU in a Presidential campaign year as basically a campaign speech to brag about oneself, attack the prior Administration, and to try to belittle the opposition party as they sit their watching was set by Barack Obama in 2012.
I thought it was tacky then and I think it is tacky now.
Was Donald Trump trying bring up some of his old Democratic vestiges?