Writers from across the political spectrum on the president’s address to Congress.
The political news cycle is fast, and keeping up can be overwhelming. Trying to find differing perspectives worth your time is even harder. That’s why we have scoured the internet for political writing from the right and left that you might not have seen.
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Matt Lewis in The Daily Beast:
President Trump outlined an immigration framework in his State of the Union address that has Mr. Lewis cautiously optimistic. Perhaps, he writes, “the only guy who has the credibility with the base to actually grant amnesty is the same guy who called Mexicans rapists.” Read more »
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Dan McLaughlin in National Review:
Mr. McLaughlin found Mr. Trump’s use of his guest’s inspirational stories during the speech to be a sign of “weakness,” though the stories themselves were powerful reminders of “what a perilous world we still live in.” Overall, however, Mr. McLaughlin, a Trump skeptic on the right, was pleased to see the Republican president promote the benefits of tax cuts, solidarity with Iranian protesters and the need for compromise over immigration. Read more »
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The editors at The Washington Examiner:
The editors at The Washington Examiner heard the president deliver an argument for a strong America. Strength, in their understanding, is less about power and more about resilience. They found the theme “cheering” and “uplifting” and, importantly, “a break from his invocation of strength in authoritarian ways.” Read more »
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Ramesh Ponnuru in Bloomberg:
Presidents tend to use State of the Union addresses to accomplish a few goals, Mr. Ponnuru writes. Apart from garnering good reviews and shoring up popularity, historically, presidents have used the opportunity to lay out policy priorities and “lay the groundwork for future legislative proposals.” In this, Mr. Ponnuru explains, Mr. Trump failed, with one very notable exception. On immigration, the president “outlined an extremely ambitious agenda with enough detail to make for a useful debate.” Read more »
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Joan Walsh in The Nation:
Ms. Walsh wants to be fair and give credit where credit’s due: “He praised ‘beautiful clean coal,’ which was surreal, but he didn’t praise Nazis or white supremacists or say there are good people ‘on all sides’ of the racial divides he has widened.” However, she writes, that’s not enough to erase what she calls a “crisis of democracy that got more dangerous just in the last 36 hours.” Read more »
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Eric Levitz in New York Magazine:
Before Mr. Trump’s comments on immigration, Mr. Levitz admits, he “endorsed a series of vague, but nonetheless bipartisan — if not outright Democratic — policy proposals.” But the “great unifier’s mask really slipped,” according to Mr. Levitz, when the president made a case against “chain migration.” Read more »
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Jamelle Bouie in Slate:
Mr. Bouie doesn’t see what other commentators saw in the president’s address. “Far from signaling some pivot toward respectability,” he writes, this State of the Union speech serves as a reminder that “the president sees attacking people of color as a top priority.” Read more »
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Richard Wolffe in The Guardian:
Mr. Wolffe isn’t so sure about the sincerity of the president’s love for America. After all, he points out, the speech comes just “one day after he decided to go easy on Russia for manipulating American democracy.” Read more »
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Chris Cillizza in CNN:
Mr. Cillizza breaks down the president’s speech into six takeaways. One is that Mr. Trump has been governing as the “Obama eraser.” Mr. Cillizza takes Mr. Trump’s pledge to keep the prison at Guantánamo Bay open as “a direct rebuttal to Obama’s long-made and long-failed pledge to close the prison.” Mr. Cillizza gives the president high marks for stagecraft, calling the stories of the families he brought to the State of the Union “haunting and memorable.” Read more »
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The editorial board at USA Today:
The editors at USA Today warn their readers not to take Mr. Trump’s overtures toward bipartisanship too seriously. They point out that he “has a habit of making bipartisan appeals only to undermine them within days or even hours.” Moreover, they write, “his calls for bipartisan compromise on such areas as infrastructure and immigration are actually major departures in current policy that lack popular support.” Read more »
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