In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Trump struck a confident and defiant tone \u2014 claiming huge victories tackling crime in major U.S. cities, securing the nation\u2019s borders, deporting undocumented immigrants, bringing down costs for American households and commanding respect for the U.S. on the world stage.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe state of our union is strong,\u201d Trump said \u2014 at a time when he is significantly weakened politically, with a sluggish economy, shrinking support for his signature immigration crackdown and some of the lowest approval ratings of his political career.<\/p>\n
Trump delivered his speech \u2014 the longest State of the Union on record \u2014 to a heavily divided Congress, receiving steady applause from Republicans and little other than stone-faced glares and momentary bursts of outrage and frustration from Democrats.<\/p>\n
Trump employed his usual superlatives<\/p>\n
Throughout his speech, Trump spoke in superlatives, as is common for him \u2014 mostly to project a rosy picture.<\/p>\n
He said he \u201cinherited a nation in crisis,\u201d with a \u201cstagnate economy\u201d and a \u201cwide open border,\u201d with \u201crampant crime\u201d and \u201cwars and chaos\u201d around the world, but that under his leadership, \u201cwe have achieved a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cOur nation is back \u2014 bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
He said U.S. military forces had conducted one of the greatest military actions \u201cin world history\u201d when they entered Venezuela at the start of the year to depose and capture then-President Nicol\u00e1s Maduro<\/a> to face drug charges in the U.S.<\/p>\n He said U.S. enemies are now \u201cscared.\u201d He said the economy is now \u201croaring.\u201d He said U.S. military and police are now \u201cstacked,\u201d and that the nation now has the \u201cstrongest and most secure border in American history,\u201d with \u201czero\u201d undocumented immigrants getting into the U.S. in the last nine months. <\/p>\n He said the country had seen the \u201cbiggest decline\u201d in violent crime since 1900 despite reliable crime data not going back that far, that the military is setting \u201crecords for recruitment,\u201d that natural gas production is at an \u201call-time high\u201d and that more Americans are working than \u201cat any time in the history of our country.\u201d<\/p>\n He gave out two Medals of Honor, a Purple Heart and a Presidential Medal of Freedom during his speech.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re winning so much that we really don\u2019t know what to do about it. People are asking me, \u2018Please, please, please, Mr. President, we\u2019re winning so much we can\u2019t take it anymore,\u2019\u201d Trump said. \u201cI say, \u2018No, no, no, you\u2019re going to win again, you\u2019re going to win big, you\u2019re going to win bigger than ever.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n Bullish on the economy, despite the polls<\/p>\n Trump was clearly working to convince Americans tuning in that the economy is strong.<\/p>\n Many Americans are unhappy with Trump\u2019s handling of the economy, according to polling. A recent Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 57% of respondents disapproved<\/a> of Trump\u2019s managing of the economy, and 64% disapproved<\/a> of his handling of tariffs.<\/p>\n However, Trump pushed a bullish message on his impact on the economy, saying that President Biden had given him \u201cthe worst inflation in the history of our country,\u201d and he had driven it down. <\/p>\n \u201cWe are doing really well,\u201d he said. \u201cThose prices are plummeting downward.\u201d<\/p>\n He cited his policy to end taxes on tipped wages, said mortgage rates have come down, and argued that his policies would soon bring down healthcare costs for American families substantially \u2014 despite millions of people facing higher costs due to the elimination by Republicans of healthcare subsidies in their recent \u201cBig Beautiful Bill.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump suggested that Democrats ruined the economy and drove up costs for Americans. \u201cYou caused that problem,\u201d he told those in the room, as Republicans stood and clapped. He also suggested Democrats had picked the issue of \u201caffordability\u201d as a political issue to focus on for nothing.<\/p>\n \u201cThey just used it \u2014 somebody gave it to them,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Flexing on the global front<\/p>\n Trump said that, in addition to increasing safety in the U.S., he had increased \u201csecurity\u201d for Americans abroad and U.S. \u201cdominance\u201d in the Western Hemisphere.<\/p>\n He claimed to have \u201cended eight wars\u201d in nations abroad, a dubious claim that Democrats in the room dismissed.<\/p>\n He said Secretary of State Marco Rubio will go down as \u201cthe best ever.\u201d<\/p>\n Trump called Venezuela a \u201cnew friend and partner\u201d since the U.S. deposed Maduro, from whom the U.S. has since received some 80 million barrels of oil.<\/p>\n \u201cAs president I will make peace wherever I can, but I will never hesitate to confront threats to America wherever I must,\u201d Trump said.<\/p>\n He praised the U.S. attack on Iran\u2019s nuclear sites in June and said that the country was warned not to build new weapons capabilities, and that the U.S. is in negotiations with Iran but hasn\u2019t heard the \u201csecret words\u201d that it will never have a nuclear weapon. <\/p>\n Four justices attend<\/p>\n Trump criticized the U.S. Supreme Court \u2014 but not heavily, as some had expected.<\/p>\n Just days prior, the court ruled that sweeping tariffs Trump had imposed on international trading partners \u2014 a signature piece of his economic policy \u2014 were illegal.<\/p>\n The 6-3 decision \u2014 in which Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and both Trump-appointed justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett joined the court\u2019s three liberal-leaning justices in ruling against the president \u2014 riled Trump. He said he was pleased with the three conservative justices who voted in favor of upholding his tariffs \u2014 Samuel A. Alito Jr., Brett M. Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas \u2014 and upset with the six others.<\/p>\n He said those six were \u201cbarely invited\u201d to observe the speech. He also suggested, without evidence, that the court was under foreign influence, and not ruling in the best interests of Americans.<\/p>\n On Tuesday night, four justices showed up for the speech, including three who had voted against the president: Roberts, as well as Justices Barrett, Kavanaugh and the liberal-leaning Elena Kagan. Not present were Gorsuch, Alito, Thomas and the court\u2019s two other liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson.<\/p>\n Before his speech, Trump cordially shook the hands of all four justices present. During his speech, Trump said the ruling was \u201cvery unfortunate,\u201d but that the good news was that many of the nations that had struck trade deals with the U.S. based on the tariffs would continue with those deals. The justices sat stone-faced, their hands in their laps.<\/p>\n Big claims and promises<\/p>\n Trump accented his speech with several teased programs and calls on Congress to act.<\/p>\n He suggested that, in the future, tariffs he would impose on trading partners might replace the income tax system in the U.S.<\/p>\n He said his administration would begin to provide working Americans with retirement plans similar to those held by federal workers, with the government matching up to $1,000 in contributions to such plans by those Americans each year.<\/p>\n He alleged that Somali immigrant \u201cpirates\u201d have \u201cpillaged\u201d and \u201cransacked\u201d Minnesota through fraud, that similar fraud is occurring in California and other states, and that he was launching a \u201cwar on fraud,\u201d to be led by Vice President JD Vance. <\/p>\n He also called on Congress to pass a law banning states from granting commercial driver\u2019s licenses to undocumented immigrants.<\/p>\n Shortly after, Trump asked everyone in the room to stand if they agreed with the statement that \u201cthe first duty of the American government is to protect American citizens, not illegal aliens.\u201d<\/p>\n Republicans stood and cheered. Democrats stayed seated. Trump told the latter they should be ashamed of themselves. Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who was born in Somalia, screamed \u201cLiar,\u201d and \u201cYou have killed Americans!\u201d<\/p>\n Times staff writer Ana Ceballos in Washington, D.C., contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his State of the Union speech Tuesday night, President Trump struck a confident and defiant tone \u2014…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":192688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27],"tags":[12351,11432,90252,7363,3622,1751,48,52,51,47,50,49,90251,49789,1524,45708,27119,225,13967,1519,90103],"class_list":{"0":"post-192687","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-american-history","9":"tag-americans","10":"tag-conservative-justice","11":"tag-country","12":"tag-court","13":"tag-democrats","14":"tag-la","15":"tag-la-headlines","16":"tag-la-news","17":"tag-los-angeles","18":"tag-los-angeles-headlines","19":"tag-los-angeles-news","20":"tag-major-u-s-city","21":"tag-mr-president","22":"tag-nation","23":"tag-sluggish-economy","24":"tag-speech","25":"tag-state","26":"tag-tariff","27":"tag-trump","28":"tag-union-address"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192687","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/192688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}