WASHINGTON (TNND) — President Donald Trump will speak to a divided public and Congress in his State of the Union address where he is expected to highlight achievements since returning to office and tout the strength of the economy.
Trump is hoping to persuade Americans that his leadership and the Republican-controlled Congress have improved their lives and they should vote for more of it when the November midterms come. He will be speaking to a deeply split Congress currently locked in a standstill over funding for the Department of Homeland Security as backlash to his immigration crackdown mounts.
Trump is expected to spend the bulk of his speech addressing the economy and his efforts to lower prices with mounting frustration about affordability that voters have increasingly aimed toward the president and congressional Republicans.
“It’s going to be a long speech because we have so much to talk about,” Trump said this week.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Trump will lay out why voters should keep Republicans in control of Congress after the midterms.
“The president’s going to make the case that three more years with him in the White House and with Republicans on Capitol Hill we can finally achieve the American dream in this country again that we had in his first term but was lost because of Joe Biden and the Democrats over the past four years,” Leavitt said.
Republicans are facing an uphill climb to hang onto the House majority with a narrow margin and historical trends that favor the party opposite to the White House. Trump’s approval ratings, including on his handling of the economy, are moving in the wrong direction with voter frustration over inflation and his crackdown on immigration.
The president’s address comes shortly after the Supreme Court struck down a key piece of his tariff regime the administration has had to scramble to replace. New tariffs have already been put in place while new reviews and investigations have been launched to implement more.
Trump has claimed his tariffs are the key to restoring America’s manufacturing sector and will make the country rich, an argument that has been met with skepticism from voters worried about rising prices. The levies have also caused some division within the GOP, with a handful of Republicans voting to roll them back.
Many Democrats are boycotting the speech altogether in protest of the president’s policies. Some are holding counterprogramming events outside the Capitol with voters who say they have been hurt by Trump’s agenda. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, who flipped the governorship from the GOP by a wide margin in last year’s election, will give the party’s official rebuttal to Trump.
Trump’s speech also comes as the U.S. has built up significant force in the Middle East amid heightened tensions with Iran. He has been debating whether to launch new strikes on the country since thousands of protesters were killed by the regime last month while in negotiations about limiting Tehran’s nuclear program.
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