The 96th State of the Union Ad­dress

Wash­ing­ton D.C. – Last week, the Pres­i­dent de­liv­ered his sec­ond State of the Union Ad­dress. While the ad­dress was de­layed by a week, Pres­i­dent Trump seemed op­ti­mistic as al­ways about the state of the U.S.  

“Mem­bers of Con­gress, the state of our union is strong,.” said Trump.  

The Pres­i­dent opened his ad­dress with a call for bi­par­ti­san pol­i­tics and co­op­er­a­tion be­tween Con­gress and the White House. “The de­ci­sion is ours to make. We must choose be­tween great­ness or grid­lock, re­sults or re­sis­tance, vi­sion or vengeance, in­cred­i­ble progress or point­less de­struc­tion.”   

Mov­ing on, the Pres­i­dent re­minded us of some im­por­tant events this year, in­clud­ing the 75^th an­niver­sary of D-day and 50^th an­niver­sary of the Apollo 11 moon land­ing. Both of these events were com­mem­o­rated briefly by the recog­ni­tion of World War II vet­er­ans and for­mer as­tro­naut Buzz Aldrin, re­spec­tively. Cur­rently, US as­tro­nauts trav­el­ling to the In­ter­na­tional Space Sta­tion bor­row a ride from Russ­ian Roscos­mos. Later this year, the Pres­i­dent re­minded us, Boe­ing and SpaceX are in­tended to have manned flights to the ISS; end­ing US de­pen­dence on Roscos­mos. 

Sum­ming up his cur­rent term, the Pres­i­dent cited the cre­ation of 5.3 mil­lion new jobs, ris­ing wages, nearly 5 mil­lion less par­tic­i­pants in the food stamps pro­gram, rapid eco­nomic growth, low un­em­ploy­ment rates, var­i­ous tax cuts, the Right to Try bill (al­low­ing ter­mi­nally ill pa­tients ac­cess to ex­per­i­men­tal drugs, per NPR), and nu­mer­ous reg­u­la­tions cut as ex­am­ples of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s suc­cess.  

The US has also sur­passed Rus­sia and Saudi Ara­bia in oil pro­duc­tion and con­tin­ues to in­crease its nat­ural gas pro­duc­tion.   

“An eco­nomic mir­a­cle is tak­ing place in the United States, and the only thing that can stop it are fool­ish wars, pol­i­tics, or ridicu­lous par­ti­san in­ves­ti­ga­tions.” 

In an oth­er­wise strongly bi-par­ti­san ad­dress, Pres­i­dent Trump took a brief mo­ment to dis­cuss the var­i­ous in­ves­ti­ga­tions into him­self and var­i­ous mem­bers of his cab­i­net. NPR’s Domenico Mon­ta­naro says, “The pres­i­dent is es­sen­tially fir­ing off a warn­ing shot to De­moc­rats, say­ing if they want him to com­pro­mise or work with them, they should drop the  in­ves­ti­ga­tions.” 

The Pres­i­dent con­tin­ued on to sum­ma­rize the First Step Act, passed last sum­mer. The law re­ac­ti­vated a ,“...2010 law that sought to re­duce sen­tenc­ing dis­par­i­ties for drug crimes in­volv­ing crack and co­caine.” (NPR) The First Step Act also changed the for­mula for time off for good be­hav­ior and changed the fed­eral three-strikes rule. This bill only ap­plies to fed­eral pris­ons, but the Pres­i­dent was op­ti­mistic that this would lead to na­tion­wide crim­i­nal  jus­tice re­form.  

“Now states across the coun­try are fol­low­ing our lead. Amer­ica is a na­tion that be­lieves in re­demp­tion.” 

Of course, the ad­dress would not have been com­plete with­out a sec­tion on the is­sue that caused the longest gov­ern­ment shut­down in U.S. his­tory: Pres­i­dent Trump’s in­fa­mous wall bill. 

“As we speak, large or­ga­nized car­a­vans are on the march to the United States. We have just heard that Mex­i­can cities, in or­der to re­move the il­le­gal im­mi­grants from their com­mu­ni­ties, are get­ting trucks and buses to bring them up to our coun­try in ar­eas where there is lit­tle bor­der pro­tec­tion. I have or­dered an­other 3,750 troops to our south­ern bor­der to pre­pare for this tremen­dous on­slaught. This is a moral is­sue. The law­less state of our south­ern bor­der is a threat to the safety, se­cu­rity, and fi­nan­cial well-be­ing of all Amer­ica.”  

The Pres­i­dent went on to list the rea­sons that he be­lieves the “wall;” now a steel slat bar­rier (see the de­sign here). Amongst these, he cited il­le­gal drug traf­fic, hu­man traf­fick­ing, “re­duced jobs, lower wages, over-bur­dened schools, hos­pi­tals that are so crowded you can’t get in, in­creased crime, and a de­pleted so­cial safety net.” In­cluded in the speech were ex­am­ples of suc­cess­ful bor­der walls in San Diego, CA and El Paso, TX.   

In­cluded in the wall bill are “...hu­man­i­tar­ian as­sis­tance, more law en­force­ment, drug de­tec­tion at our ports, clos­ing loop­holes that en­able child smug­gling, and plans for a new phys­i­cal bar­rier...” 

An­other big topic, the US­A’s for­eign trade pol­icy, was among the pres­i­den­t’s fi­nal top­ics. The Pres­i­dent dis­cussed a new trade deal with China, the re­place­ment of NAFTA – the USMCA (U.S.-Mex­ico-Canada Agree­ment), a pro­posed “Rec­i­p­ro­cal Trade Act” which would al­low the U.S. to place a counter tar­iff on coun­tries that place an “...un­fair tar­iff on an Amer­i­can prod­uct.” 

The Pres­i­dent also en­dorsed a plan to lower med­ica­tion cost and backed a tar­geted anti-HIV bill. 

Fol­low­ing suit with his pre­de­ces­sor – for­mer Pres­i­dent Bar­rack Obama – Pres­i­dent Trump an­nounced that the U.S. is of­fi­cially with­draw­ing from the Cold-War era INF Treaty, stat­ing that Rus­sia has re­peat­edly vi­o­lated the terms of the agree­ment, and say­ing “We re­ally have no choice. Per­haps we can ne­go­ti­ate a dif­fer­ent agree­ment, adding China and oth­ers, or per­haps we can’t, in which case we will out-spend and out-in­no­vate all oth­ers by far.” 

Fi­nally, the Pres­i­dent spoke of the on­go­ing peace talks in Afghanistan.  “In Afghanistan, my ad­min­is­tra­tion is hold­ing con­struc­tive talks with a num­ber of Afghan groups, in­clud­ing the Tal­iban.”  NPR’s Greg Myre said this in ex­pla­na­tion, “The U.S. and the Tal­iban are hold­ing the most se­ri­ous peace talks since the U.S. en­tered the Afghan war in 2001. How­ever, ma­jor ob­sta­cles re­main. The Tal­iban wants all U.S. troops — num­ber­ing some 14,000 — to leave. Also, the Tal­iban has re­fused to meet with the Afghan gov­ern­ment. Even with a deal, the hard part would be en­sur­ing all par­ties abide by it.” 

For more in­for­ma­tion about the 96^th State of the Union Ad­dress, see NPR’s an­no­tated tran­script here, and CBS News record­ing of the full ad­dress on YouTube here.