President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool)

President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress on Feb. 28. (Jim Lo Scalzo/Pool)

Amid turmoil, Trump seeking a reset with State of the Union

In his first State of the Union address he plans to set aside his more combative tone.

  • By JONATHAN LEMIRE and ZEKE MILLER Associated Press
  • Saturday, January 27, 2018 5:05pm
  • Nation-World

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Beset by poor poll numbers and the grind of the Russia investigation, President Donald Trump will look to reset his term with his first State of the Union address, arguing that his tax cut and economic policies will benefit all Americans.

The theme of his Tuesday night address to Congress and the country is “Building a safe, strong and proud America,” and the president is looking to showcase accomplishments of his first year while setting the tone for the second.

Aides say the president plans to set aside his more combative tone for one of compromise, and to make an appeal beyond his base.

Trump often engages in hyperpartisan politics, and his tax overhaul has been criticized for disproportionately favoring the wealthy. But he will try to make the case that all groups of people have benefited during his watch, according to a senior administration official who was not authorized to preview the speech for the record and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

The annual address is a big set piece for any president, a prime-time window to address millions of voters. Every word is reviewed, every presidential guest carefully chosen, every sentence rehearsed. The stakes are enormous for Trump, hoping to move past a turbulent first 12 months in office.

Trump is giving the speech “with the lowest approval ratings of any president in his first year in the history of presidential polling, and can point to the least number of legislative accomplishments,” said Wendy Schiller, political science professor at Brown University. “Every month that goes by in which Trump fails to increase his support works against him because voters’ negative impressions of him will just solidify.”

She said the address “could turn that around if he strikes a bipartisan conciliatory tone and makes it more about the country than about himself.”

Five themes are expected to dominate: the economy and the tax overhaul, infrastructure, immigration, trade, and terrorism and global threats.

Selling the GOP’s tax plan is an election-year project as Republicans look to retain their majority in Congress. The tax changes are billed as essential to powering the ambitious projections of economic growth and Trump is expected to cite the benefits to the public that proponents envision.

Trump also plans to outline a nearly $2 trillion plan that his administration contends will trigger $1 trillion or more in public and private spending on roads, bridges and other public works projects.

On immigration, he will promote his new proposal for $25 billion for a wall along the Mexican border and for a path to citizenship for hundreds of thousands of young people brought to the U.S. as children and now here illegally.

Trump’s trade talk will reflect what he discussed at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland on Friday: a preference for one-on-one deals instead of multilateral agreements.

The public should get an update on the fight against terrorism and an assessment of international threats, including North Korea. The senior administration official said Trump probably would avoid the taunts of “Little Rocket Man” for Kim Jong Un and “fire and fury” that he used before.

The White House says one of Trump’s guests for the speech will be someone who has been touched by the opioid crisis.

The address comes at a critical point for the president. He wants to move past the government shutdown that coincided with the anniversary of his inauguration and prepare for a grueling election season that is shaping up as a referendum on his leadership. Trump and members of his Cabinet are expected to travel in the days after the speech to drive home its themes.

Critics wonder why the president will show the resolve to stay on message.

“The most capable White Houses use the State of the Union as an organizing moment to set agenda for the whole year, from both a messaging and legislative perspective,” said Jennifer Palmieri, former communications director for President Barack Obama. “I don’t think this White House is capable of that kind of discipline. So even if he gives a good speech, it is unlikely to have any staying power and transcend his broader problems of not being able to drive a coherent agenda or generate support for himself beyond his core supporters.”

Sometimes, the address is a high-water mark for a president.

In 2002, Republican George W. Bush used the speech to define the “axis of evil” — Iran, Iraq, and North Korea — that he believed supported terrorism and sought weapons of mass destruction.

In 1996, Democrat Bill Clinton declared that the “era of big government is over” after emerging from a shutdown fight.

In 1941, Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt outlined the “four freedoms” that people across the globe held dear in the face of World War II’s horrors.

The White House, led by policy adviser Stephen Miller and staff secretary Rob Porter, has spent weeks on the speech, seeking input from Cabinet secretaries and agency leaders. Several drafts have circulated throughout the West Wing and the president has weighed in with handwritten notes.

A White House official said the speech-writing process has helped cut through the “hangover” of passing the tax bill just before the holidays and kept officials more focused on issues than they might otherwise have been through Trump’s trip this past week.

Trump did address a joint session of Congress in 2017, though it was not technically a State of the Union speech because it occurred barely a month into his term. It was notable for this president for how it hewed to conventional speechmaking.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Nation-World

FILE - Britain's Queen Elizabeth II looks on during a visit to officially open the new building at Thames Hospice, Maidenhead, England July 15, 2022. Buckingham Palace says Queen Elizabeth II is under medical supervision as doctors are “concerned for Her Majesty’s health.” The announcement comes a day after the 96-year-old monarch canceled a meeting of her Privy Council and was told to rest. (Kirsty O'Connor/Pool Photo via AP, File)
Queen Elizabeth II dead at 96 after 70 years on the throne

Britain’s longest-reigning monarch and a rock of stability across much of a turbulent century died Thursday.

A woman reacts as she prepares to leave an area for relatives of the passengers aboard China Eastern's flight MU5735 at the Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2022, in Guangzhou. No survivors have been found as rescuers on Tuesday searched the scattered wreckage of a China Eastern plane carrying 132 people that crashed a day earlier on a wooded mountainside in China's worst air disaster in more than a decade. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
No survivors found in crash of Boeing 737 in China

What caused the plane to drop out of the sky shortly before it was to being its descent remained a mystery.

In this photo taken by mobile phone released by Xinhua News Agency, a piece of wreckage of the China Eastern's flight MU5735 are seen after it crashed on the mountain in Tengxian County, south China's Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region on Monday, March 21, 2022. A China Eastern Boeing 737-800 with 132 people on board crashed in a remote mountainous area of southern China on Monday, officials said, setting off a forest fire visible from space in the country's worst air disaster in nearly a decade. (Xinhua via AP)
Boeing 737 crashes in southern China with 132 aboard

More than 15 hours after communication was lost with the plane, there was still no word of survivors.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., center, arrives at the U.S. Capitol in Washington D.C. with Sen. JD Vance, R-Ohio, right, the vice president-elect, on Wednesday morning. Gaetz withdrew from consideration Thursday, saying he was an unfair distraction to the transition. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Matt Gaetz withdraws from consideration as attorney general

“It is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction,” Gaetz wrote Thursday on X.

Attendees react after Fox News called the presidential race for Former President Donald Trump, during an election night event at the Palm Beach County Convention Center in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Wednesday. Trump made gains in every corner of the country and with nearly every demographic group. (Haiyun Jiang / The New York Times)
Donald Trump returns to power, ushering in new era of uncertainty

Despite criminal convictions and fears of authoritarianism, Trump rode frustrations over the economy and immigration.

Voters cast their ballots at a polling place inside the Weisman Art Museum at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis on Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 5 2024. Voters headed into polling stations on Tuesday in the closing hours of a presidential contest that both major parties said would take the country in dramatically different directions, capping a contentious and exhausting 107-day sprint that began when President Joe Biden abandoned his bid for a second term.  (Caroline Yang/The New York Times)
Live updates: Georgia called for Trump

The Daily Herald will be providing live updates on national election developments throughout Tuesday.

Liam Payne performs during the Jingle Ball at Madison Square Garden in New York in 2017. Payne, who rose to fame as a singer and songwriter for the British group One Direction, one of the best-selling boy bands of all time, died after falling from the third floor of a hotel in Buenos Aires on Wednesday. He was 31. (Chad Batka / The New York Times)
Liam Payne, 31, former One Direction singer, dies in fall in Argentina

Payne rose to fame as a member of one of the bestselling boy bands of all time before embarking upon a solo career.

In this photo taken from video provided by the Ukrainian Presidential Press Office, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy speaks to the nation in Kyiv, Ukraine, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. Street fighting broke out in Ukraine's second-largest city Sunday and Russian troops put increasing pressure on strategic ports in the country's south following a wave of attacks on airfields and fuel facilities elsewhere that appeared to mark a new phase of Russia's invasion. (Ukrainian Presidential Press Office via AP)
Ukraine wants EU membership, but accession often takes years

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s request has enthusiastic support from several member states.

FILE - Ukrainian servicemen walk by fragments of a downed aircraft,  in in Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, Feb. 25, 2022. The International Criminal Court's prosecutor has put combatants and their commanders on notice that he is monitoring Russia's invasion of Ukraine and has jurisdiction to prosecute war crimes and crimes against humanity. But, at the same time, Prosecutor Karim Khan acknowledges that he cannot investigate the crime of aggression. (AP Photo/Oleksandr Ratushniak, File)
ICC prosecutor to open probe into war crimes in Ukraine

U.N. human rights chief Michelle Bachelet confirmed that 102 civilians have been killed.

FILE - Refugees fleeing conflict from neighboring Ukraine arrive to Zahony, Hungary, Sunday, Feb. 27, 2022. As hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians seek refuge in neighboring countries, cradling children in one arm and clutching belongings in the other, leaders in Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Moldova and Romania are offering a hearty welcome. (AP Photo/Anna Szilagyi, File)
Europe welcomes Ukrainian refugees — others, less so

It is a stark difference from treatment given to migrants and refugees from the Middle East and Africa.

Afghan evacuees disembark the plane and board a bus after landing at Skopje International Airport, North Macedonia, on Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. North Macedonia has hosted another group of 44 Afghan evacuees on Wednesday where they will be sheltered temporarily till their transfer to final destinations. (AP Photo/Boris Grdanoski)
‘They are safe here.’ Snohomish County welcomes hundreds of Afghans

The county’s welcoming center has been a hub of services and assistance for migrants fleeing Afghanistan since October.

FILE - In this April 15, 2019, file photo, a vendor makes change for a marijuana customer at a cannabis marketplace in Los Angeles. An unwelcome trend is emerging in California, as the nation's most populous state enters its fifth year of broad legal marijuana sales. Industry experts say a growing number of license holders are secretly operating in the illegal market — working both sides of the economy to make ends meet. (AP Photo/Richard Vogel, File)
In California pot market, a hazy line between legal and not

Industry insiders say the practice of working simultaneously in the legal and illicit markets is a financial reality.

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.