U.S. President Donald Trump struck a tone of unity in his state of the union speech on Tuesday, the first he has delivered to a divided congress.
“The agenda I will lay out this evening is not a Republican agenda or a Democrat agenda,” he said. “It’s the agenda of the American people.”
He said there is a new opportunity in American politics, and that victory is not winning for one’s party but for the country. He also called for a rejection of the politics of revenge.
“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.”
Trump uses his address to call on Americans to reject the politics of revenge.
Trump’s primetime address comes at a critical moment in his presidency. He pushed his party into a 35-day government shutdown over border security last month, only to cave to Democrats, reopening the government without the $5.7 billion he was demanding in return to build a wall on the border with Mexico.
A boy stands between posts in the US-Mexico border fence as people on the American side ride horses in the distance in Tijuana’s beach district. (Mario Tama/Getty Images)
Without mentioning the shutdown, he said, “We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness.”
With another shutdown deadline coming Feb. 15, the president has few options for getting Congress to fund the wall, and risks further alienating his party if he tries to circumvent lawmakers by declaring a national emergency instead.
But Trump used the speech to repeat his calls for greater security on what he called “the very dangerous southern border.” He said he has ordered another 3,750 troops deployed to the area. At the same time, he said he wants to create an immigration system that protects U.S. citizens.
“Tolerance for illegal immigration is not compassionate,” says Trump, “it is cruel.”
This is Trump’s first state of the union speech since Democrats took control of the House of Representatives in the midterm elections, putting many of his rivals in the room. Per tradition, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who was praised by Democrats for her hardline negotiating during the shutdown, sat behind the president, right over his shoulder.
She was among the large number of women in the house chamber — many of them wearing white, the colour favoured by the 19th century suffragettes — who stood and cheered as Trump highlighted the number of women now in both the U.S. workforce and political office.
Female members of Congress cheer after Trump acknowledges there are more women in Congress than ever before. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)
“All Americans can be proud that we have more women in the workforce than ever before — and exactly one century after Congress passed the Constitutional Amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in Congress than ever before,” he said to cheers and chants of U-S-A! U-S-A!
Unfortunately, according to The Associated Press, Trump’s statements about the number of women in the workforce weren’t entirely accurate.
There are more women working than ever before. But that’s due to population growth, not something that Trump can credit to any his policies.
As for whether a greater percentage of women is working or searching for a job than at any point in history, the AP says women have seen better days. According to the U.S. Labour Department, women’s labour force participation rate right now is 57.5 per cent. The rate was higher in 2012 and peaked in 2000 at roughly 60 per cent.
Attack on investigations
Even as Trump extolled the state of the U.S. economy, he used the opportunity to make a veiled attack on investigations by the special counsel, Robert Mueller, and others.
“The only thing that can stop [the economy],” he said, “are foolish wars, politics or ridiculous partisan investigations.”
And he didn’t stop there.
Democrat Stacey Abrams delivered the party’s response to Trump. Abrams narrowly lost her bid in November to become America’s first black female governor, and party leaders are aggressively recruiting her to run for U.S. Senate from Georgia.
She talked about her own upbringing and how her family taught her that there was great opportunity, but that no one succeeds alone. She called the shutdown “a stunt” engineered by the president. But she said in times of division, people must come together.
“So, even as I am very disappointed by the president’s approach to our problems, I still don’t want him to fail. But we need him to tell the truth, and to respect his duties and respect the extraordinary will create a stronger America together.”
Democrat Stacey Abrams will deliver her party’s response to Trump’s speech. (John Amis/Associated Press)
Trump’s guests for the speech included Anna Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old woman whose life sentence for drug offences was commuted by the president, and Joshua Trump, a sixth-grade student from Wilmington, Del., who was allegedly bullied because of his last name. They were sitting with Melania Trump during the address.
from Update Trend News http://bit.ly/2WHvE80
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