A US president’s speech to Congress — even without the formal gloss of a State of the Union address — is typically a time for a call to national unity and predictable claims about the country being strong.
However, that was not US President Donald Trump’s plan. His speech on Tuesday night was relentlessly partisan, boasting about his election victory and criticizing Democrats for failing to recognize his accomplishments.
The hard edge reflected Trump’s steamroller approach to his second term, brushing aside opposition and demanding loyalty throughout the federal government.
Photo: Reuters
Trump set a tone of division almost from his first words, calling his predecessor, former US president Joe Biden, the worst president in the nation’s history and chiding Democrats as so stinting in their praise of him they would not even grant him perfunctory applause.
He was speaking to a divided US House of Representatives. Republicans stood and cheered. For Democrats, it was silence, with occasional shouts of protest, with the only applause when he announced that Ukraine wanted to restart peace negotiations.
Trump leaned hard into cultural flashpoints — his opposition to affirmative action, diversity programs and transgender rights.
Photo: AFP
He inflated the scale of his victory in November last year, the margin of which was among the smallest in US history. The tenor was more that of a campaign speech than an address to US Congress.
In a stunning breach of protocol and a measure of the fractious politics, one Democrat, US Representative Al Green, stood up and shouted at Trump, gesturing toward the president with his cane. He refused to sit when asked by House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, who ordered him removed.
Trump described Democrats as a lost cause.
“There is absolutely nothing I can say to make them happy,” he said.
Trump has been unsparing in his criticism of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.
However, toward the end of his address, Trump read from a letter from Zelenskiy he had received earlier in the day.
“The letter reads Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer,” Trump said. “Nobody wants peace more than the Ukrainians... My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.”
On Monday, Trump ordered a “pause” in US assistance to Ukraine as he looked to dial up the pressure on Zelenskiy to engage in negotiations to end the war with Russia.
The US president gave voice to a frustration of many Americans over rising costs of groceries — particularly the skyrocketing cost of eggs, but blamed Biden instead of bird flu.
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