President Trump will deliver his State of the Union address on Tuesday at a pivotal moment in his presidency.
While Mr. Trump is expected to tout a lengthy list of achievements, his popularity is the lowest it has been since he retook office. Polls show that Americans, by a wide margin, disapprove of him on what were once his winning issues: the economy and immigration. The government is in a partial shutdown. And the Supreme Court — which he hoped would be loyal to him — last week delivered a striking blow against a main pillar of his presidency: his sweeping tariffs imposed on countries across the globe.
Republicans are now in danger of losing the House in the upcoming midterm elections, a development that would threaten to derail much of Mr. Trump’s second term, because Democrats would be empowered to subject him to a torrent of investigations.
With control of the House hanging in the balance, Mr. Trump will try to change public opinion during his speech on Tuesday night. He has lamented — both privately and publicly — that he is not getting enough credit for his achievements.
The president is expected to tout what the administration views as his economic wins, including employment growth in January that came in at more than twice the rate that economists had expected; a decline in gas prices; and a 12 percent increase in the Dow Jones industrial average over the last year. He is expected to highlight his success at the border, where illegal immigration has sharply declined; a nationwide drop in murders over the last year; and investments in the U.S. military, such as a bonus payment of $1,776 to nearly 1.5 million service members.
Here’s what to watch for:
Trump’s sinking poll numbers
Mr. Trump swept back into office on the strength of his message that he would turn around the economy and crack down on immigration. But polls show the president losing support on both of those issues.
Many Americans feel the economy is not working for them. And while there was widespread support for Mr. Trump’s message of reducing the flow of migrants into the country, there has been widespread outrage at the deadly way Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have carried out his deportation campaign in Minneapolis.
In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has tried to reframe the national conversation on both issues. He has embarked on what his administration has billed as a nationwide tour to tout his economic agenda — and he claimed victory over the issue of high costs.
“What word have you not heard over the last two weeks? Affordability,” Mr. Trump said at a rally at a steel distributor last week in Rome, Ga. “Because I’ve won. I’ve won affordability.”
Mr. Trump has also tried to shift attention away from the chaos of his deportation campaign in Minnesota to the success his administration has had in reducing illegal immigration at the southwestern border.
“We have a border that’s 100 percent closed now,” the president claimed on Monday, though some illegal crossings continue.
If Mr. Trump cannot turn around his poll numbers, then he is likely to say the polls are fake.
“I’m not at 40 percent,” he asserted on Monday of his current approval rating. “I’m much higher than that.”
Clash with the court
Mr. Trump is not the first president to express his displeasure with rulings from the Supreme Court, but he has attacked its justices with unmatched vitriol.
After the court struck down his sweeping tariff scheme last week, Mr. Trump said he could no longer control himself to behave like a “good boy.”
He called the justices who ruled against him “fools and lap dogs” who are “unpatriotic and disloyal.” And he said that Justices Neil M. Gorsuch and Amy Coney Barrett, whom he nominated during his first term, were “an embarrassment to their families.”
Mr. Trump has announced new global tariffs, under a different legal arrangement, as a way around the court’s ruling.
Tuesday will be Mr. Trump’s first time seeing the justices after his broadside attack on them.
The foreign policy president
Despite running on an “America First” platform, Mr. Trump has spent much of his second term focused on foreign policy. In open pursuit of a Nobel Peace Prize, Mr. Trump has inserted the United States into myriad international conflicts, often playing the role of a peace negotiator.
At the same time, he has been quick to use force against foreign nations when he deems it necessary, including striking Iran’s nuclear facilities and capturing the president of Venezuela, whom the United States has accused of drug crimes.
How much time Mr. Trump spends in his speech focusing on domestic policy versus international affairs will be telling about the direction of his presidency.
“He’s losing support from some of his America First base, because it looks like he’s been all around the world and not focusing on the problems of everyday Americans,” said Todd Belt, a professor at George Washington University’s Graduate School of Political Management. “So he really needs to talk about how what he’s done is going to make people’s life better.”
Drama in the chamber?
Mr. Trump’s speeches to Congress are rarely without conflict. Last year, Representative Al Green, a Democratic lawmaker from Texas, was escorted out of the chamber after shouting at Mr. Trump that he lacked a mandate to cut Medicaid. At the end of his first term, the Democratic House speaker at the time, Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, famously ripped up Mr. Trump’s speech.
This year, a substantial number of Democrats are planning to boycott the speech and attend an alternative event, a rally called the “People’s State of the Union,” which will take place on the National Mall near the Capitol.
Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, has encouraged members to either sit silently through the speech or boycott it altogether, rather than attend and create distractions in the House chamber. Such protests potentially risk alienating swing voters ahead of the midterms.
“If you are Minority Leader Jeffries, you are thinking, ‘Let’s not mess this up, because we have a golden opportunity to retake the House,’” Mr. Belt said.
For the party’s official response to Mr. Trump’s speech, Democrats have chosen Abigail Spanberger, the new governor of Virginia, who was known as a centrist during her years in Congress. The choice of a woman with a law enforcement background was meant to send a message that Democrats are a responsible choice for voters looking for an alternative to Mr. Trump’s approach.
But if Mr. Trump can drag Democrats into a verbal fight, it could undercut the message they are trying to send.
Luke Broadwater covers the White House for The Times.
The post Trump, Bruised and Unpopular, Turns to State of the Union for a Reset appeared first on New York Times.
