NONTRUTHS/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “President Trump’s first State of the Union address was billed as a bid for unity, a call for all to rise above party and faction in pursuit of national ideas and ideals.
In fact, scattered throughout the 80-minute speech were several moments that might qualify as outreach. But if you blinked, you might have missed them.
For example, halfway through his speech, the president made a passing reference to vocational schools. Then he quickly added these ten words — “And let’s support working families by supporting paid family leave,” a hat tip to a Democratic issue supported by his eldest daughter, Ivanka.
Cameras cut to a happy Ivanka, clapping in the family gallery. Democrats, too, leaped to their feet, and many stayed there as the president followed up with a single sentence referring to another of their issues: “[T]his year we will embark on reforming our prisons to help former inmates who have served their time get a second chance at life.”
But anyone expecting a word of detail regarding any of these proposals or the resources they’d require, in fact, got no such thing. Last year, the president included paid family leave in his budget but left it up to the states to finance it. Nothing changed…
Throughout the speech, when the president came to questions of policy, he fell back on a recitation of his campaign talking points. Much of the speech recalled his remarks at the pep rallies he has held in the past year, most of them deep in the heart of Trump Country.”
-Ron Elving, “Trump’s Big Speech: More Pep Rally Than Bipartisan Breakthrough,” NPR, Jan. 31, 2018 05:00am