State of the Union 2020: President Trump gives annual address to Congress

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders gave speeches on Tuesday night responding to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address, with Whitmer providing a moderate’s vision for the Democratic Party and Sanders making the case for reviving America through left-wing policies.

While Whitmer was the one giving the official Democratic Party response to Trump’s remarks, it was actually Sanders’s speech that seemed to be most directly in conversation with the president’s address. This was something Trump seemed to anticipate, with his remarks full of strident warnings of a socialist takeover of America.

For some Democratic members of Congress, President Trump’s annual State of the Union address Tuesday night was a bridge too far. Over the course of the speech, at least three lawmakers walked out in protest, and many others who remained on the House floor were vocal about their displeasure.

Reps. Tim Ryan (D-OH), Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), and Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D-NJ) all left as Trump gave his address, which Tlaib described on Twitter as shameful and “beneath the dignity of the office.”

President Trump didn’t miss the opportunity to portray himself as a champion of criminal justice reform during his State of the Union speech on Tuesday. But a fuller look at his record is more complicated.

“Our roaring economy has, for the first time ever, given many former prisoners the ability to get a great job and a fresh start. This second chance at life is made possible because we passed landmark criminal justice reform into law. Everybody said that criminal justice reform could not be done, but I got it done, and the people in this room got it done,” he said.

President Trump pulled out all the stops to put on a show at the State of the Union. And then Speaker Nancy Pelosi stole it by ripping up some pieces of paper.

The president pulled some reality show-style tricks out of his hat during Tuesday evening’s address — he gave a young girl a scholarship, reunited a military officer with his family, and presented a medal of honor to a racist and misogynist radio host mid-speech. But the president wasn’t the only one pulling stunts to get some attention — House Speaker Pelosi did, too.

President Donald Trump opened his State of the Union speech touting strong economic conditions for black Americans and their decorous record serving their country — before later announcing in the same speech that he would award a racist radio talk show host the Presidential Medal of Freedom and concluding on a very whitewashed version of US history.

It was a classic bit of Trumpian whiplash. The president loves to talk out of one side of his mouth, touting the economic gains for many Americans, including black people, while he’s been in the White House, before he starts talking out of the other, outlining a revanchist and white-centric worldview that thoroughly informs his politics.

Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaidó appeared as a guest at the State of the Union on Tuesday, with President Donald Trump touting him as the “true and legitimate president of Venezuela.”

Trump’s move was likely intended to boost Guaidó on the international stage, as the Venezuelan politician’s attempts to oust President Nicolás Maduro from power have continued to flounder.

President Donald Trump addressed Congress on Tuesday night for his last State of the Union address before the 2020 election, claiming in an appeal to voters that, over the past three years, he had helped stage the “Great American Comeback.”

A transcript follows:

President Trump largely glossed over health care in his State of the Union speech, but he did try to put one item on Congress’s to-do list: He promised if the body passed a bipartisan bill to reduce prescription drug costs, “I will sign it into law immediately.”

It was a statement that didn’t sit too well with some House Democrats, who passed comprehensive legislation to cut drug prices just a few weeks ago. So a few of them stood up, held three fingers in the air, and shouted “H-R-3” (the number of their bill) — interrupting Trump for a few awkward moments in the middle of his speech.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer probably made a smart choice by trying to give an earnest policy speech in her response to the State of the Union address, rather than one addressing the president’s crimes or the blood-soaked demagoguery of the anti-immigrant rhetoric in Trump’s speech Tuesday night.

The problem is that it was also a boring speech.

Fred Guttenberg, the father of a teen girl killed in the 2018 Parkland, Florida, school shooting, was escorted out of the State of the Union on Tuesday after protesting President Donald Trump’s inaction on gun violence.

Guttenberg’s protest came shortly after Trump vowed his opposition to stricter gun laws. “Just as we believe in the First Amendment, we also believe in another constitutional right that is under siege all across our country,” Trump said. “So long as I am president I will always protect your Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.”

If you have an expensive health condition, and you don’t know much about President Trump’s record on health care, then his Tuesday night State of the Union address was reassuring.

“I have also made an ironclad pledge to American families,” Trump claimed. “We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions.”

In his 2020 State of the Union speech, President Trump reiterated his pledge to eradicate HIV in the US by 2030. Here’s our explainer on what that would take, first published in February 2019.

Many American presidents have used the State of the Union address as an opportunity to make grand pronouncements about beating back health scourges. Barack Obama in 2016 called for a “moonshot” to cure cancer. George W. Bush in 2003 announced his intention to “turn the tide against AIDS” with the creation of PEPFAR, the global health program to fight AIDS.

President Donald Trump used his State of the Union address in February to take credit for a recent drop in drug overdose deaths and a reversal in the opioid epidemic.

“With unyielding commitment, we are curbing the opioid epidemic,” Trump said. “Drug overdose deaths declined for the first time in nearly 30 years. Among the states hardest hit, Ohio is down 22 percent, Pennsylvania is down 18 percent, Wisconsin is down 10 percent — and we will not quit until we have beaten the opioid epidemic once and for all.

This year’s State of the Union comes at a particularly contentious time: in the midst of the Senate impeachment trial of President Donald Trump. During this fraught political moment, Democratic women arrived to the event in all-white attire, continuing their streak of using color-coordinated outfits to send a striking visual message to the president.

This year’s suffragist white dress code is intended to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which was ratified in 1920 to grant American women the right to vote. Like last year, some congresswomen have also donned a green “ERA Yes!” button to endorse the renewed effort to pass the Equal Rights Amendment, which would enshrine equality between men and women into the US Constitution.

As President Donald Trump stands in front of Congress to deliver his third State of the Union Address on Tuesday night, he’ll likely portray himself as a strong commander in chief with a proven and unique ability to protect and support Americans.

From killing top terrorists to combating Iran to renegotiating trade deals, Trump can use last year’s events to paint a picture of a leader in full control of his foreign policy, feared by enemies and respected by allies. Whether you agree with that assessment depends on if you support the president, but it’s a theme many expect Trump to hit during his speech.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer will deliver the Democratic response to President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

The State of the Union response is notoriously a mixed blessing for the speaker. No one who follows politics will soon forget Marco Rubio’s lunge for his water bottle; Bobby Jindal went from presumed future presidential frontrunner to watercooler joke overnight. But the politician selected to give it still serves an important totemic role for their party.

It would be extraordinarily out of character for President Donald Trump to avoid excessive boasting and inaccurate claims about the state of the economy at his State of the Union address on Tuesday night.

But the reality is that, for the first time in more than a decade, things in the American economy are back to normal — low unemployment, growing wages — in a country that has been away from normal so long that normalcy can feel like an extraordinary achievement. So while Trump’s boasts are likely to overstate the case somewhat, broadly speaking, the American economy really is doing pretty well.