TRUMP AS PRESIDENT/TRUMP PEOPLE: “He likes the instant gratification of Twitter tirades to prefab statements from his press office. He prefers improvising at a political rally to earnest policy addresses. But on Monday [2-4-19], President Trump was doing a fairly unusual thing, for him: working on a draft of a speech and then practicing delivering it. After spending part of the weekend at Mar-a-Lago, his club in Palm Beach, Fla., working on the speech, Mr. Trump spent two hours going over it with Stephen Miller, his chief policy adviser, in the Oval Office, according to his private schedule. He also spent time on Monday practicing in the Map Room with a handful of senior administration officials. He was expected to do another teleprompter-and-lectern practice session there on Tuesday [2-5-19], with his aides giving him notes. His acting chief of staff, Mick Mulvaney; his son-in-law, Jared Kushner; his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders; and his communications director, Bill Shine, have all been involved in the process.”
–Annie Karni and Maggie Haberman, “For Trump, the State of the Union Is a Spectacle, and He Is Ready for It,” The New York Times online, February 4, 2019