Trump tells skeptical America the US is winning

What happened

President Donald Trump Tuesday night delivered the first State of the Union address of his second term. He used his record-long speech to defend his economic policies, attack Democrats and award medals to the Team USA hockey goalie, a Korean War veteran, an Army helicopter pilot wounded in Trump’s Venezuelan operation and two National Guard members shot near the White House last year, one of whom died. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger focused on the economy in the main Democratic rebuttal.

Who said what

The “core” of Trump’s speech was a “calculation that he can persuade Americans that the economy is in better shape than many think it is,” The Wall Street Journal said. He told the country “he had unleashed a new age of economic prosperity,” but polls suggest most Americans disagree, and Trump’s “natural impulses as a salesman” conflict with the “political imperative” to show he understands their “economic anxiety.” When he slammed the Supreme Court for striking down his sweeping tariffs, Republicans “did not respond with raucous applause as they did for other policies,” Axios said.

Trump blamed Democrats “for many of the nation’s ills,” including high prices, immigration and rising health care premiums, and he “seemed to get angrier as the speech progressed,” The Associated Press said. “Sometimes what’s not said is as notable as what is,” however, and Trump didn’t mention his aggressive ICE raids or the deaths of Alex Pretti and Renee Good. “Nor did Trump mention the Epstein files” or other “key vulnerabilities,” CNN said, And he “didn’t spend much time at all on his prescriptions for the economy and affordability.”

Still, he “offered a broad-based sweep of kitchen-table economic issues,” and by Trump’s standards, “he turned in a disciplined performance, largely sticking to prepared remarks” and “avoiding the sometimes-bizarre asides that often pepper his speeches,” Reuters said. “By the standards of most politicians, it would have been a dark performance,” but Trump advisers pushing him to “dial down his rhetoric” were “likely relieved.”

What next?

Trump “delivered marching orders” for Congress to “finalize his agenda,” with a “notable request for lawmakers to avoid action on tariffs,” Burgess Everett and Nicholas Wu said at Semafor. But with the midterms approaching and “Republican fears of losing the House increasing,” it’s “increasingly challenging to see” how he can get much accomplished domestically before his next State of the Union.