Donald Trump’s Address to Congress

A CNN poll found that about 7 in 10 Americans said the speech made them feel more optimistic about the direction of the country, and 57 percent said they had a “very positive” reaction to Mr. Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress.

That’s to be expected of a Republican president facing a Democratic party that’s out of power in the US House and Senate.

What? Yes, that happened too.

What offended Democrats, a minority in both chambers, was Trump’s reference to past incidents in which one illegal immigrant “viciously gunned down” two California law enforcement officers and another “viciously murdered” a 17-year-old boy.

“Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Nations around the world like Canada or Australia and many others have a merit based immigration system”. Former President Barack Obama’s closet selection was roundly panned on the few occasions he wore a tan suit, generally in warmer months.

In case you missed it, Trump gave an unusually calm and traditional speech in the House of Representatives on Tuesday night. In 1981, Ronald Reagan said that it was not “his agenda” but “our agenda”. Like Obama, Bill Clinton peaked with his joint session – pulling 66,900,000 in 1993, an audience he never came close to duplicating even when embroiled in scandal. George W. Bush sent a sweeping tax cut proposal to Congress less than three weeks after taking office in January 2001.

Mr Trump will also have to cut money from other areas to meet that expenditure to balance his budget. In a preview of his performance to Breitbart News, Trump had said, optimistically, that he intends to strike an “up tone” though “I inherited a mess”.

At the same time, the Australian dollar was worth 76.73 USA cents, having gained value overnight.

According to the joint poll by the CNN broadcaster and Opinion Research Corporation, nearly two-thirds of the viewers praised the president’s priorities for the country, while about seven in 10 viewers said that the speech made them feel more optimistic about the future of the country.

In an effort to stem criticism that he is hostile towards minority communities, Trump opened with a line about Black History Month coming to a close, acknowledging that “work remains to be done” in the field of civil rights. The claim was the first update “on the progress I’ve made in keeping those promises”, he said. He said he did on creating jobs, on his pledges to build a border wall and fight the Islamic State and on picking a conservative to be a Supreme Court justice.

Whereas the Trump of Twitter is akin to your bellicose, conspiracy theory-spewing relative at Thanksgiving dinner, the Trump who addressed Congress was reserved and nearly quiet, with just enough of an empathetic tone to make some of the effects of the first few weeks of his presidency seem somewhat muted.

Democrats sat silently while Republicans stood and cheered.

The president hosted GOP lawmakers at the White House on Wednesday in a show of unity, saying that the gathering was meant to “start the process” of collaboration. The dress was a nod to the suffragette movement.

“I wanted to hear him outline a real plan to keep good-paying jobs in NY, but instead we heard more of the same talk about lowering taxes for rich corporations, building an expensive border wall, and gutting the Affordable Care Act that millions of Americans now rely on”, she said in a post-speech statement.