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Trump’s first State of the Union: Can a divisive president flip the script?
President Trump will deliver his first State of the Union address Tuesday at a juncture of opportunity and peril for his presidency, and his anxious allies hope he will show he has the ability to do something he has not done before: bring the country together.
White House officials have offered few details of what Trump will say other than that he will take credit for a healthier economy and tie its continued growth to the Republicans’ new tax plan, as well as argue his case on immigration, trade, infrastructure and national security.
In tone, they say, it will not be like the fiery populist inaugural address, in which Trump offered a dark picture of “American carnage.” A senior administration official who has been involved in the drafting promised “a speech that resonates with our American values and unites us with patriotism.”
With its bumper-sticker-ready theme of “building a safe, strong and proud America,” the address is expected to resemble the vision of a “renewal of the American spirit” that Trump offered in his well-received speech to a joint session of Congress last February. It also will come on the heels of the pragmatic, upbeat speech he delivered Friday to a skeptical audience at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.
The president has for months been making notes on points and phrases he thinks will resonate and sending those snippets to his staff, another aide said.
Yet it will be an incongruous picture the American public sees Tuesday night: a divisive chief executive, who has discarded countless norms, performing one of the most traditional of presidential rituals — an hour or so during which, uninterrupted and unfiltered, he can claim ownership for his accomplishments and set an agenda for the year ahead.
Democrats, meanwhile, have chosen Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.), a charismatic new political star who has a universally known family name, to give their official response.
The larger question is whether Trump can expand his appeal beyond his ardent base to reach the majority of Americans who are responsible for his historically poor job-approval ratings.
“Coming off the tax cuts and the trip to Switzerland, he’s in a position to be very presidential, and my hope is he will speak as the leader of the country and would offer a series of proposals that would bring us together,” said former House speaker Newt Gingrich, a Trump adviser and defender. “I don’t think this year he needs to speak to part of America. He needs to speak as president.”
Republican Judd Gregg, a former New Hampshire governor and U.S. senator, counseled that Trump should tamp down his tendencies to personalize every issue and instead look outward: “Optimism is the key word — optimism that isn’t self-congratulatory, hopefully.”
The stakes for his party are high as Republicans approach an election season with Democrats increasingly bullish about their prospects of winning back one or both houses of Congress. That would break the Republican lock on power in Washington, thwart the president’s ability to enact his agenda and imperil a second Trump term.
Regardless of whether Trump mentions it, an unseen presence looming in the House chamber will be special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election. The inquiry appears to have reached a critical phase, with the possibility that the president himself may soon be interviewed by investigators.
Such a situation is not without precedent, and presidents have handled it in different ways. In his 1974 State of the Union speech, President Richard Nixon made what would turn out to be a futile effort to stanch the scandal that was engulfing his presidency by addressing it directly.
“I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end,” Nixon said. “One year of Watergate is enough.”
President Bill Clinton made his 1998 address less than a week after most of the nation heard the name Monica Lewinsky for the first time. Speculation was high that his resignation might be imminent.
The day before the speech, frantic aides scheduled a public appearance at which reporters would have an opportunity to question him, in the hopes that it would relieve some of the pressure. It was at that event that Clinton memorably — and disastrously — insisted: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky.”
A year later, Clinton delivered his State of the Union speech in the House chamber while his impeachment trial was underway in the Senate.
Clinton, however, kept his focus on the “longest peacetime economic expansion in our history” and on his plan to protect Social Security.
“The most capable White Houses leverage this moment to not just be a night of television where you have a big national audience, but to set both the message and policy agenda for the year,” said Jennifer Palmieri, who was a White House aide in the administrations of Clinton and President Barack Obama. “It should be an effective organizing tool for your whole administration. But I do not believe that this White House is capable of leveraging the State of the Union in that way, because there is no governing theory.”
White House aides, however, say the president will have plenty to say on policy.
Trump will try to find bipartisan support for the immigration framework he has laid out, which includes expanded protection and a path to citizenship for young undocumented immigrants brought to this country as children in exchange for $25 billion for his border wall and more restrictions on legal immigration.
In the national security section of the speech, he is expected to address the ongoing nuclear threat from North Korea. Aides said he also plans to reiterate the international economic message he took to Davos: that the United States is open for business.
There will be touches that the national audience has come to expect in a State of the Union address. The White House has chosen a set of everyday Americans to sit with the first lady and have a moment in the spotlight as Trump tells their stories. Among them: someone who will be portrayed as a beneficiary of Republican economic policies, and someone who has been affected by the opioid crisis.
Even if the State of the Union address lives up to the White House’s billing, there remains the possibility that Trump will do what he has done in the past: step on his own message.
Just days after his carefully crafted address to the joint session last February, for example, Trump detonated a string of tweets accusing Obama of having wiretapped Trump Tower, declaring, “This is McCarthyism!”
Instantly, that unsubstantiated charge overshadowed the speech.
“A year later, people have a skepticism about him in these moments,” said Michael Waldman, a chief speechwriter for Clinton and now president of the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law. “Everybody knows that teleprompter Trump can come close to sounding like a normal president, and Twitter Trump will upend that.”
Nonetheless, the White House has plans for Trump and his Cabinet to travel in the days after the speech to amplify and promote the agenda he lays out.
“This is the time when you’re master of your message and you’re in charge,” said Ken Khachigian, who was a top speechwriter in Ronald Reagan’s White House. “Take three or four or five days and bask in the glory.”
Here’s What Americans Really Think — And Know — About The Government Shutdown
“Moderates on both sides had come to an agreement, but hardliners on immigration like Stephen Miller blew it up,” one Democrat said, referring to the White House aide known for his restrictionist immigration views. “Now we wait until February to go through this all over again.” (On that point, Americans as a whole are similarly pessimistic: 60 percent think it’s at least somewhat likely that, within the next month, the government will shut down again.)
Attacker driving ambulance packed with explosives kills 40 in Kabul
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World Marks Holocaust Remembrance Day
The world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz Nazi death camp in 1945.
The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington hosted officials from around the world to remember the genocide.
European Union Ambassador David O’Sullivan said that museums remembering the Holocaust are essential for future generations to learn about the past atrocities.
WATCH: EU Ambassador: New Generation Needs to Keep Memory Alive
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“The new generation also needs people, stories and places to keep the memory alive. To make sure we keep the promise made at the end of the Holocaust — Never Again,” O’Sullivan said.
Museum officials also read a letter from Dr. Muhammad Al-Issa, secretary-general of the Muslim World League based in Saudi Arabia, who wrote, “Who in their right mind would accept, sympathize or even diminish the extent of this brutal crime?”
WATCH: Letter From Secretary General of Muslim World League
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First lady Melania Trump was among those who toured the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Friday and tweeted that she experienced a “powerful and moving tour.” She posted a photograph of her lighting a candle at the Prayer Wall.
The U.N. Security Council announced Friday that it will visit the U.S. Holocaust Museum on Monday as part of a trip to Washington, where members will have lunch with President Donald Trump.
The White House on Friday recognized International Holocaust Remembrance Day with a message that said, “We acknowledge this dark stain on human history and vow to never let it happen again.”
The statement specifically mentioned the 6 million Jews killed by the Nazis, following criticism last year that it made no mention of Jews in its statement.
“Tomorrow (Saturday) marks the 73rd anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazi death and concentration camp in Poland,” the statement said.
“We take this opportunity to recall the Nazis’ systematic persecution and brutal murder of 6 million Jewish people. In their death camps and under their inhuman rule, the Nazis also enslaved and killed millions of Slavs, Roma, gays, people with disabilities, priests and religious leaders, and others who courageously opposed their brutal regime,” the statement said.
WATCH: Saved by Ukrainian Family, Jewish Boy Lived to Become Nobel Laureate
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Last year, the White House defended its omission of Jews from the statement with Hope Hicks, now the White House communications director, saying that “despite what the media reports, we are an incredibly inclusive group, and we took into account all of those who suffered.”
At the United Nations, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a statement Friday that “decades since the Second World War, we see the persistence of anti-Semitism and an increase in other forms of prejudice.”
He said the world remembers the 6 million Jews who died in the Holocaust and said, “All of us have a responsibility to quickly, clearly and decisively resist racism and violence.”
A Sober Trump Reassures the Davos Elite
His moment in the global sun was shadowed to an extent by a New York Times report that he had tried to fire the special counsel investigating his campaign ties to Russia and backed off only when the White House counsel threatened to resign. Mr. Trump dismissed the report as “fake news,” even though other news outlets confirmed it, and he otherwise tried to ignore it publicly.
But his unlikely visit to Davos was meant to be a shift in tone from his populist, protectionist rhetoric. He went so far as to say that he would be willing to re-enter the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the Asian trade agreement he abandoned last year, if it was renegotiated on better terms. That offer came just days after the other 11 members opted to form their own bloc without the United States.
“We would consider negotiating with the rest, either individually, or perhaps as a group, if it is in the interests of all,” Mr. Trump said, despite his oft-stated insistence on one-on-one trade deals rather than multinational pacts.
Mr. Trump was largely well received by the billionaire investors, corporate executives and heads of state who a year ago were fretting that his election would mean the demise of the global order they had built, but today were celebrating his tax cuts and regulatory rollback.
“The economy has improved since Trump came in,” said Kanika Dewan, president of Bramco, a company that builds airports around the globe from headquarters in New Delhi and Bahrain. “His offensive comments are mostly about capturing media attention. At the end of the day, he’s not going to do anything to destroy his legacy.”
Brian Mikkelsen, Denmark’s minister of industry, business and financial affairs, welcomed Mr. Trump’s legislation slashing corporate tax rates. “I’m quite sure, talking to Danish business leaders, that they will invest more in the States because of these tax cuts,” he said.
But like others, Mr. Mikkelsen emerged somewhat uncertain about which Mr. Trump to expect in the months ahead. “It was impossible to guess what direction he will take” on trade, he said.
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Mr. Trump used the overnight visit to salve other wounds. He expressed regret for sharing anti-Muslim videos posted by an ultranationalist British fringe group, which offended Prime Minister Theresa May. “If you are telling me they’re horrible people, horrible, racist people, I would certainly apologize, if you’d like me to do that,” Mr. Trump told Britain’s ITV.
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For Mr. Trump, whose rule is “never apologize,” that was an unusual concession. But he offered no public apology for recent offensive comments about African countries when he met on Friday with President Paul Kagame of Rwanda, the chairman of the African Union. The union demanded a retraction and apology at the time of the remarks, but neither Mr. Trump nor Mr. Kagame mentioned the incident on camera on Friday.
Beyond those meetings, Mr. Trump’s visit focused to a striking degree on business. His speech mentioned priorities like terrorism, Iran and North Korea in passing, but included nothing about China, Russia, Europe, climate change, global health or other priorities. He related to the audience as a fellow capitalist, asserting, incorrectly, that he was the only businessman to have served as president.
Declaring that “America is roaring back,” he promoted a story of economic rebirth. “The world is witnessing the resurgence of a strong and prosperous America,” he said. “I’m here to deliver a simple message: There has never been a better time to hire, to build, to invest and to grow in the United States. America is open for business, and we are competitive once again.”
His comeback message, however, was tempered by a report that came out while he was on stage. The American economy grew by 2.6 percent in the fourth quarter of 2017, healthy but lower than the 3 percent or 4 percent or higher that he has aspired to. Over all, the economy grew 2.3 percent in 2017, Mr. Trump’s first year in office, up from 1.5 percent in 2016, President Barack Obama’s last year, but lower than in either 2014 or 2015.
As he often does, Mr. Trump presented a selective version of the last year. He boasted that African-American unemployment was at a new low, but did not mention that it began falling in 2011, and that the decline this year simply continued the progress that started under Mr. Obama.
He claimed credit for creating 2.4 million jobs since his election, but the number of new jobs in 2017 was no higher than in any of the last six years of Mr. Obama’s tenure.
Still, he was right that stock markets have soared to remarkable heights on his watch and that the American business community had responded to his tax cuts and regulatory rollback with enthusiasm. His surprisingly warm reception here, despite the schism over trade and global affairs, underscored the optimism of many corporate leaders.
Klaus Schwab, who founded the World Economic Forum in 1971, not only praised Mr. Trump on stage, but also seemed to exonerate the myriad incendiary actions that have troubled many in the corporate community. “I’m aware that your strong leadership is open to misconceptions and biased interpretations,” Mr. Schwab said. Some in the audience felt that went too far, and booed.
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Mr. Trump’s speech was largely written by Gary D. Cohn, the president’s national economic adviser and a former Goldman Sachs banker, and Robert Porter, the White House staff secretary. Stephen Miller, the immigration hard-liner who often crafts the president’s more provocative speeches, was busy working on next week’s State of the Union address.
In conversations over the last few days, Mr. Trump agreed to offer a more optimistic, less strident tone to show flexibility without making any substantive compromise. He stuck closely to the script on the teleprompter. Even during a later 10-minute session of questions and answers with Mr. Schwab, Mr. Trump generally stuck to the talking points, although he could not resist a jab at the “fake” media and noted that many in the room supported his Democratic opponent in 2016.
“He was the marketer-in-chief,” said Daniel Yergin, vice chairman of IHS Markit, a research and information company focused on energy. “He was selling America, he was selling the economic story and he was selling himself to an international business community who expected something else.”
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Kentucky lawmakers push to allow armed staff in schools following campus shooting
The bill would apply to all schools, he said, but rural school districts might find it especially useful. Kentucky has 264 police officers who serve as school resource officers at schools in half of the state’s counties, “but for some of our rural counties, which are small, they can’t afford it,” Alvarado said.
Frustrated by Russia investigation, Trump turns ire toward Rosenstein
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US senator from Hawaii says states should not send missile alerts
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – U.S. Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii said on Thursday that state and local governments should be prohibited from sending missile alerts like the errant warning that stirred hysteria across his state earlier this month.
Also at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing about the blunder, a federal regulator disclosed that the state civil defense employee who mistakenly activated the alert during a drill has refused to speak with investigators.
Schatz, a top Democrat on the committee, told the hearing he was introducing legislation to make clear only the federal government is authorized to send nuclear alerts to the public.
A spokesman for the Hawaii Emergency Management Agency (HEMA), which transmitted the false alarm, said state officials were open to exploring Schatz’ proposal.
Under the current system, the state is only supposed to transmit a nuclear attack warning to the public if notified by the U.S. military’s Pacific Command of an inbound missile, according to the spokesman, Richard Rapoza.
He said similar federal-to-state “handoff” arrangements exist for electronic warnings to the public of impending natural disasters, such as tsunamis and hurricanes.
“If Sen. Schatz wants to revisit that, then we’d be happy to discuss it with him,” Rapoza told Reuters by telephone.
The false alarm, which went uncorrected for 38 minutes after being transmitted to mobile phones and broadcast stations, caused widespread panic across the Pacific island state. The Jan. 13 scare came amid heightened tensions over North Korea’s ballistic nuclear weapons program.
State authorities have acknowledged human error and a lack of adequate fail-safe measures were to blame and vowed to correct deficiencies.
The erroneous message was sent when a HEMA employee made the wrong selection from a “drop-down” software menu, choosing to activate a live missile alert instead of an internal test alarm, state officials have said.
One protocol change is requiring two individuals to sign off on transmitting tests or live alerts. Another makes false-alarm notices easier to issue.
The Federal Communications Commission bureau chief overseeing public safety, Lisa Fowlkes, praised state cooperation with the FCC probe but said she was “disappointed” that the employee found at fault had refused an interview. “We hope that person will reconsider,” she said.
The employee remains reassigned from his previous post as a warning systems officer, but no other staff changes or disciplinary actions have been made, Rapoza said.
“We encouraged all of our employees to cooperate with all the investigations, but what an individual does comes down to their own personal choice,” Rapoza said. “We’re disappointed that this person is not cooperating.”
Further electronic alert drills remain suspended, but monthly tests of Hawaii’s newly reinstated air raid siren warnings for a missile attack will continue as scheduled, with the next one set for Feb. 1, Rapoza said.
Reporting by David Shepardson in Washington; Additional reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles; Editing by Cynthia Osterman and James Dalgleish
South Korean hospital fire kills at least 37, patients walk through fire to escape
SEOUL (Reuters) – A fire in a South Korean hospital that did not have a sprinkler system killed at least 37 people and injured more than 70 others on Friday, officials said, the latest tragedy to raise concerns over the country’s safety standards.
Many patients “walked though fire and smoke” to escape the blaze at the Sejong Hospital, in the southern city of Miryang, as the main exit was on the first floor which was ablaze, a city official told Reuters.
Other patients used ladders and plastic escape slides to flee upper floors, while firefighters carried patients who could not walk.
The fire is the deadliest in South Korea in at least a decade and follows a fire last month which killed 29 people in a high rise sports center.
The presidential Blue House initially said the fire killed at least 41, but then deferred to the city’s fire chief who put the death toll at 37.
A list posted by fire officials outside the hospital identified at least 26 of the victims by name. With ages ranging from 35 to 96 years, at least 20 of the victims were over 70 years of age.
On a wall at a funeral home next to the hospital, officials had scrawled a handwritten list of names and hospital rooms as family members crowded around to look.
The fire started at around 7.30 a.m. (2230 GMT) at the rear of the emergency room on the first floor of the hospital, Choi Man-woo, the head of Miryang city’s fire station, told a televised media briefing. With a population of around 108,000, Miryang is about 270 km (170 miles) southeast of Seoul.
Television news footage showed a huge pall of black smoke billowing from the windows and entrance to the hospital and flames flickering.
At least 177 patients – most of them elderly – were at the hospital and an adjacent nursing home when the fire broke out, hospital director Song Byeong-cheol said at a press briefing.
Song said at least one doctor, a nurse, and a nurse’s aide were killed on the second floor.
Most of those who died were on the first and second floors, said Choi, adding there were no deaths from burns.
By Friday afternoon the burnt out hospital was ringed by police as forensic investigators combed the smoke-blackened building. Charred debris and shattered glass littered the ground outside.
NO SPRINKLER SYSTEM
Song said the hospital did not have a sprinkler system and was not large enough to require one under South Korean law.
That was due to change this year under a new law, however, and hospitals in the country had until the end of June to install a sprinkler system to comply with new regulations, Choi told Reuters. He said he did not know if the hospital had been planning to install a system.
Officials said they were still investigating the cause, but are looking closely at a possible short circuit in the emergency room’s heating and cooling system.
Song said the hospital had regular safety inspections.
South Korea, Asia’s fourth-largest economy and one of the world’s fastest ageing populations, has faced criticism in recent years over inadequate safety standards.
President Moon Jae-in convened an emergency meeting with top aides and called on the government to take “all necessary measures” to help survivors.
Interior minister Kim Boo-kyum traveled to Miryang to apologize for the fire. He promised the government would do its best in helping the victims, Yonhap reported.
A number of South Korean lawmakers also visited survivors, and toured the scene.
In December, 29 people were killed in a blaze at an eight-storey fitness center in Jecheon City.
Most of the victims of that fire were women trapped in a sauna by toxic fumes, sparking anger at reports of shoddy construction, broken doors, blocked exits and other problems that may have contributed to the deaths.
A 2014 fire at a rural South Korean hospital for chronically ill elderly patients killed 21 people. And in 2008 a warehouse fire outside Seoul left 40 people dead.
Reporting by Christine Kim; Additional reporting Yuna Park; Writing by Josh Smith; Editing by Simon Cameron-Moore, Paul Tait and Michael Perry