Not the miracle he bragged about
by Tom Sullivan
The president's sniffing was minimal during last night's State of the Union address. Policy proposals were, too. False and inflated claims were about what we have come to expect from Donald Trump. The economy is a miracle. The southern border is hellscape of rape, violence, "prostitution and modern-day slavery." If not for him, we would be "in a major war with North Korea."
Only two moments stood out.
Richard Nixon in his 1974 address called for an end to the Watergate investigation, saying, “One year of Watergate is enough."
In an eerie echo, Trump addressed investigations into his businesses and his campaign's dealings with Russia. After boasting about last week's jobs report as evidence of an "economic miracle," Trump added that only "politics, or ridiculous, partisan investigations" could stop it. Trump continued, "If there is going to be peace in legislation, there cannot be war and investigation. It just does not work that way." Trump, who has little clue about how it works, may find out the way Nixon did.
But this, this was worth sitting through the rest of Trump's SOTU (sorry about the ad):
House Democratic women dressed in white for the speech to honor the women's suffrage movement. Trump, in acknowledging, "No one has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the new jobs created in the last year," touched off a brief demonstration of celebration. Freshman Democrats stood up, pointed to themselves, laughed, applauded and pumped fists in the air. Democratic colleagues applauded and acknowledged the freshman women. Their jobs, won in last fall's "blue wave" election, gave control of the House to Democrats, and with that the power for Democrats to conduct the investigations Trump complained of earlier. These were not the jobs for which Trump meant to claim credit.
Trump appeared to take it in stride, saying, "You were not supposed to do that."
He went on, "And exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, we also have more women serving in the Congress than ever before."
Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, sitting behind Trump, motioned for her freshman women to stand again and enjoy the moment as she applauded them. Democratic Reps. Xochitl Torres Small, Abigail Spanberger, Ilhan Omar, and Rashida Tlaib stood and applauded. Elissa Slotkin, Chrissy Houlahan, Deb Haaland, Mary Gay Scanlon and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joined them. They began chanting, “U-S-A.”
Tlaib called the moment the highlight of the night:
"We not only look differently, we serve differently and we're from all different communities," Tlaib said, adding, "It felt amazing at that moment to look at each other and see a sea of white looking back at us and we were very proud that it was our side of the aisle that was able to do that."
The president's side of the room was indeed maler, whiter, and older.
Depending on the outcome of new House investigations into Trump's involvement with Russia (with possible unsealing of his tax returns); the investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller into Russian hacking of the 2016 election; and investigations by the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York into the Trump inaugural committee's finances; the president's side of the room could soon be smaller as well.