That’s a wrap on our State of the Union live blog. There’s a lot to unpack in Trump’s speech. (Note: That’s not quite the same thing as saying that a lot in the speech will end up mattering.)
For a detailed play-by-play on how everything went down, start at the bottom of this live blog and scroll up. But, if you’re in a rush, I also asked the team to give me their main takeaway(s) — in the form of a newspaper headline if they so chose. Those are below. As always, thanks for joining us.
Perry: “A State Of The Union Address Where Standing Up For The Base Trumped Bipartisan Outreach”
Harry: I would be really surprised if this moves any dial. These speeches generally don’t do that, and I thought the substance of this speech is what we’ve been hearing from Trump for a while now. We’ll see though.
Clare: My headline is, “Trump’s First State Of The Union Doubles Down On Campaign And First-Year Themes Of Immigration And Law And Order”
Nate: I gave away my thesis earlier on Twitter-dot-com, but I think my theme is that this speech was the start of the 2020 campaign. That is to say, a fairly partisan speech, with quite a lot of red meat for the base — and even some sections that trolled Democrats — but delivered in a more controlled and less impulsive fashion than the “modern-day presidential” approach that Trump takes on social media. Any pundit who thinks it was a “pivot” is an idiot, full stop. It’s the opposite of a pivot — it’s a doubling-down. But this version of Trump would be fairly effective if he were on the campaign trail every day in 2019 or 2020.
Anna: “There’s No Question Where Trump Stands On Immigration”
Julia: I can’t quite nail a headline, but my takeaway is that across a bunch of different ideas, violence was a unifying theme: the families of gang violence victims, the violence of repressive regimes, discussions of terrorism.
Amelia: No mention of the Russia investigation. Trump’s allies are probably relieved.
Andrea: Trump stuck to the script. He seemed more formal/authoritative/not as angry as he can sometimes be. I also learned from reading the last FiveThirtyEight live blog that academics write terrible headlines and this is clearly no exception.
Hilary: “Trump Has Really Improved His Ability To Read From A Teleprompter”
Dhrumil: “Republicans Like Trump’s Speech, Democrats Not So Much”
Poll Bot: “100 Percent Of Poll Bots Enjoyed Doing A Live Blog”