SE Cupp: Trump shows he can win four more years
Trump's State of the Union speech tonight was a winner. By that I mean, it should remind everyone, especially Democrats, that he could very well be on his way to winning another four years.
Let's be clear, as fact-checker Daniel Dale was busy pointing out on Twitter, it was full of half-truths and total distortions. But the broad themes Trump hit on are likely to be very popular with wide swaths of American voters.
The economy is good, unemployment is down, and his administration passed key pieces of legislation like paid family leave for federal employees, funds for combating opioid addiction and criminal justice reform.
He boasted of fighting ISIS and putting not one but two prolific terrorist leaders in the ground.
And he directly addressed some of the Democrats' more extreme positions: promising that "we will never let socialism destroy American healthcare," and vowing to end late-term abortion, to uphold the Second Amendment and to end sanctuary city policies.
Democrats don't want to believe it, but all of that probably sounds more reasonable and indeed mainstream than a number of the policies most of the Democrats for president are running on, like free health care for undocumented immigrants, abolishing private health insurance, banning guns and unrestricted abortion rights. If you took Trump out of the House tonight, that speech would probably even appeal to many Democratic and independent voters.
Trump, of course, is both his best pitchman as well as his own worst enemy. Democrats are betting that his lies, his insults and his impeachment will overshadow these winning messages. I wish they mattered as much as they think they do. But I'm willing to bet that if Democrats underestimate the potency of these promises in favor of unpopular, far-left policies, he'll get four more years.
SE Cupp is a CNN political commentator and the host of "SE Cupp Unfiltered."
Julian Zelizer: Democrats are going to need a powerful message to counter Trump
In 2020, Democrats are going to need a stronger and more forceful message in response to President Trump's economic claims.
On Twitter, it is easy to find many very clear and accurate refutations of the President's rhetoric in his State of the Union address, in which he claims credit for just about everything. As former Obama administration officials David Axelrod, Gene Sperling and others tweeted during the address, President Obama produced more jobs in the final three years of his administration than Trump did in the first three years of his.
Unemployment declined from about 10.2% to 4.7% during the Obama presidency, much more dramatic than the additional 1.2% decline in the rate that has taken place since 2017. President Obama guided the nation out of the 2008 financial crash and his economic package was crucial to the recovery.
The current economy carries deep structural problems, such as the constant struggle of middle class Americans who don't feel secure, and whose fortunes don't change dramatically regardless of the macroeconomic numbers.
But Democrats should know by now that fact checking this President alone does not suffice. The overall economic numbers are strong enough that he will be able to use them as a bludgeon on the campaign trail. Democrats will need a forceful response, making a clear-cut case that they can do better and that only their party can ensure these good times continue.
They need to devise a powerful message that provides Americans with an accurate origin story of the boom, and they also need to make a more convincing case about what only they can deliver in the future.
Otherwise, they will keep allowing Trump one of his most potent talking points going into November 2020.
Julian Zelizer is the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of History and Public Affairs at Princeton University and author of "The Fierce Urgency of Now: Lyndon Johnson, Congress, and the Battle for the Great Society."
Raul Reyes: Trump's reality show comes to Congress
On Tuesday night, instead of the 2020 State of the Union, President Donald Trump presented an extended partisan rally. This spectacle included handing out an "opportunity scholarship" to an African American child, presenting the Medal of Freedom to a divisive radio host and surprising a military wife with the appearance of her husband. These were calculated stunts worthy of reality television -- not befitting the President's annual address to the nation.
The tone of the evening was set right from the beginning, when the President refused to shake the extended hand of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. So much for setting politics aside and affirming unity. Over the next roughly 90 minutes, Trump seemingly could not call attention to his accomplishments without resorting to putting down past administrations or bashing Democrats. This had the unintended effect of making the Commander-in-Chief look boastful, petty and small.
On border security and immigration, Trump was entirely predictable. He highlighted his administration's action on immigration, while failing to mention that his policies have been largely carried out through executive orders and regulations, thus bypassing Congress. He bragged about building his border wall, without mentioning that Mexico is certainly not paying for it. He recited gruesome stories of crimes by undocumented migrants, playing to his xenophobic base. Decrying so-called sanctuary cities, Trump declared, "The United States of America should be a sanctuary for law-abiding Americans." This was said without a shred of irony by the President whose companies have long hired undocumented workers, and who himself stands accused of high crimes and misdemeanors (all of which he denies.)
It was also notable what went unspoken during his speech: No mention of voting rights, the threat of foreign interference in our election or income inequality. No mention of the earthquakes in Puerto Rico, the dangers of white supremacist violence or the ballooning federal deficit. And forget about climate change or the Dreamers. Instead, the President who has repeatedly shown disrespect for American institutions, values and norms has now debased the State of the Union address itself.
Raul A. Reyes is an attorney and a member of the USA Today board of contributors. Follow him on Twitter @RaulAReyes.
Scott Jennings: Trump grabs the optimism high ground from sulking Democrats
Donald Trump is having the best week of his presidency, and it's only half over.
The latest national polling—including the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll and the Gallup Poll—shows Trump with the highest job approval of his presidency, largely because of his handling of the American economy (63% in the Gallup poll, the highest for a president since George W. Bush just after 9-11)
He was smart to focus on the economic successes happening under his administration during his State of the Union; if he is reelected, it will be because he's done a good job with it and Democrats are offering plans that make it seem like we are living in a new Great Depression instead of an era of extreme prosperity and opportunity. Trump's living in -- and taking advantage of -- reality and the Democrats just aren't.
Trump was also smart to leave impeachment alone, but I can't blame him for shunning House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's handshake to start the speech. She's trying to throw him out of office on an impeachment that is now underwater with many Americans, as the aforementioned polling indicates. Trump has come out of impeachment in the strongest position of his presidency, thanks to Democratic overreach and focus on things that just don't matter to average Americans.
The big losers of the night were the sullen Democrats who sat on their hands as the President touted free trade agreements most of them voted for, low unemployment and even a little girl who just found out she's going to a better school.
Trump has grabbed the optimism high ground from a Democratic party that apparently can't see past its own rage over Trump's presidency, which, for most Americans, is turning out pretty well. Presidential elections are usually about the future, and Trump projected a hopeful vision versus a gloomy opposition.
Scott Jennings, a CNN contributor, is a former special assistant to President George W. Bush and a former campaign adviser to Sen. Mitch McConnell. He is a partner at RunSwitch Public Relations in Louisville, Kentucky. Follow him on Twitter @ScottJenningsKY.
Aaron David Miller: The elephant in the room
I had three takeaways from President Donald Trump's speech. First, the President provided a pretty conventional laundry list of accomplishments. These were tied together by a central theme: here's what I've done for you lately. The key, of course, is how many of Trump's myriad claims are tethered to fact and reality. My heart goes out to the fact checkers this evening who may well be working into the wee hours of the morning to discern just that.
Second, it was a speech for Trump's base. There was enough red meat in this speech on guns, religious liberty, sanctuary cities and deregulation to keep every zoo in America supplied for a year. There was little effort on the President's part to reach across the aisle, let alone to even shake the hand of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who had her own partisan moment when she tore up his remarks at the close of his speech.
Third, the President's demeanor was shaped by the elephant in the room -- his resentment and bitterness of being only the third president in American history to be impeached. Trump never mentioned the "I" word directly, of course. But with some exceptions, the President's demeanor -- defiant, arrogant, seemingly angry and preternaturally boastful -- seemed clearly tied to his frustration with an impeachment process that has dragged out for several months.
Aaron David Miller is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and author of "The End of Greatness: Why America Can't Have (and Doesn't Want) Another Great President." Miller was a State Department Middle East analyst and negotiator in Democratic and Republican administrations.
Sarah Isgur: Trump has redefined the meaning of Republican
President Donald Trump's State of the Union speech -- and his party's praise of it -- highlighted the tectonic party realignment underway, an alignment driven almost entirely by the President himself. While Trump mentioned some familiar Republican issues, like efforts to curb abortion and undocumented immigration, there were also some noticeable absences.
Limited government and spending were once the hallmarks of any Republican platform, but they were not even given a passing nod tonight. Tax cuts and the regulatory state were mentioned only in the past tense. And other policies previously associated with Democrats, though more limited in scope in Trump's version, were highlighted -- like his calling on Congress to pass a nationwide paid family leave law and implement large-scale criminal justice reform.
Largely, these policy shifts have gone without much notice. But, make no mistake, as the Trump presidency has busted through so many norms, it has redefined what a Republican is -- and in less than three years' time. And in 2024, Republican presidential candidates will have to wrestle with the very basic question of what it means to be a Republican.
Sarah Isgur is a CNN political analyst. She is a staff writer at The Dispatch and an adjunct professor at George Washington University's School of Media and Public Affairs. She previously worked on three Republican presidential campaigns and graduated from Harvard Law School.
Peter Bergen: Trump's confused message on military
In his State of the Union speech President Donald Trump reveled in his increased confidence in his own military judgments, proudly declaiming that in October he had ordered the operation in which the leader of ISIS, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi had died. Then a month ago Trump also ordered the targeted killing of the de facto leader of Iran's military forces, Qasem Soleimani.
But there was something of a paradox in Trump's speech on Tuesday: At the same time that he lauded those operations, he also said that he was winding down the post-9/11 wars in the greater Middle East, for instance, in Afghanistan where he said he was planning to bring American troops home and to end America's longest war.
A graphic illustration of this impulse was Trump's reveal---worthy of the best kind of reality TV show--- when Sgt. First Class Townsend Williams, who had just returned from Afghanistan on his fourth deployment to the greater Middle East, was reunited in the gallery of the House chamber with his wife, Amy, and their two young children, to their great surprise and joy.
But in his speech he conflated America's seemingly endless wars in the Middle East with what should be better explained to the American people as a necessary "persistent presence" in countries where US national security interests remain at stake.
After all, simply pulling all US troops out of Afghanistan runs the real risk that much of the country would be taken over by the Taliban, who could then play host to a variety of jihadist terrorist groups.
Preventing this does not require a large American military footprint, but it does require a small but steady presence of predominantly US Special Forces for many years into the future to advise and assist the Afghan military and perform counterterrorism missions where necessary
Indeed, it was this such military presence in Syria and Iraq that enabled American forces to "find, fix and finish" both Baghdadi and Soleimani.
Simply leaving the greater Middle East to its own devices as Trump often suggests as his end goal is not a recipe for regional stability, nor indeed global stability, as we saw with pullout of all American forces from Iraq in 2011 and the subsequent rise of ISIS there.
Peter Bergen is CNN's national security analyst, a vice president at New America and a professor of practice at Arizona State University. His new book is "Trump and His Generals: The Cost of Chaos."
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