State of the Union TV ratings lowest in 15 years

The high-profile incursion presented yet another challenge for Mr.Obama, who struck a controversial deal this summer to forestall the country’s nuclear proliferation – a deal Republican critics continue to describe as irresponsible and unenforceable. “And over the course of this year, I intend to travel the country to push for reforms that do”.

“The future we want – opportunity and security for our families, a rising standard of living, and a sustainable, peaceful planet for our kids – all that is within our reach”, the president said.

“We need to be honest with each other, and with ourselves”, said the young governor, eyes wide in the TV lights.

The Nielsen company says 31.3 million people watched President Barack Obama deliver his last State of the Union, his smallest audience for the annual speech. In the next few minutes, the president tried to address the state not of the American union but of American politics.

He also charged that some GOP candidates are attempting to “scapegoat fellow citizens who don’t look like us or pray like us or vote like we do or share the same background”. “It’s easier to be cynical, to accept that change isn’t possible, and politics is hopeless, and to believe that our voices and actions don’t matter”. It’s a matter of understanding what makes us strong. Obama hailed the United States troops as the finest fighting force in the history of the world.

Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin pledged Friday that the House will produce a governing agenda by the time Republicans pick their presidential nominee later this year.

He “sought to contrast Republicans’ bleak appraisals of the state of the nation with his own upbeat argument”, per the Times, as evidenced in lines like “anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction”. “Period. Period. It’s not even close”.

Trump has horrified the political establishment with his call for the mass-deportation of undocumented Latino migrants and a freeze on Muslim travel to the U.S. “The world respects us not just for our arsenal; it respects us for our diversity and our openness and the way we respect every faith”. “Masses of fighters on the back of pickup trucks and twisted souls plotting in apartments or garages pose an enormous danger to civilians and must be stopped”.

Summing up what he called “the progress of these past seven years”, Obama gave first place to “how we recovered from the worst economic crisis in generations”.

“That’s the story Islamic State wants to tell; that’s the kind of propaganda they use to recruit”. “We just need to call them what they are?-?killers and fanatics who have to be rooted out, hunted down, and destroyed”.

Obama did not mention 10 U.S. Navy sailors who were captured by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Jan. 12 after their boats drifted into Iranian waters in the Persian Gulf, CNN reported.

At another moment in his speech, Obama won a standing ovation for naming Vice President Joe Biden to head a new national commission to cure cancer.

A lawsuit contends it is up to a court to determine if presidential candidate Ted Cruz can legally run for the White House.