Trump Uses SOTU to Campaign, Pelosi Rips Up Speech

By Staff, Agencies

Standing before a Congress and nation sharply divided by impeachment, US President Donald Trump used his State of the Union [SOTU] address Tuesday to extol a “Great American Comeback” on his watch, three years after he took office decrying a land of “American carnage” under his predecessor.

Being the first president to run for reelection after being impeached, Trump received a raucous but divided response from Congress with Republicans in the House of Representatives chanting “four more years” while Democrats stood mute.

Meanwhile, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi ripped up her copy of Trump’s speech as he ended his address.

“America’s enemies are on the run, America’s fortunes are on the rise and the America’s future is blazing bright,” Trump claimed. “In just three short years, we have shattered the mentality of American decline and we have rejected the downsizing of America’s destiny. We are moving forward at a pace that was unimaginable just a short time ago, and we are never going back!”

Trump offered economic success as a chief rationale for a second term.

He spent much of the speech highlighting the economy’s strength, including low unemployment, stressing how it has helped blue-collar workers and the middle class, though the period of growth began under his predecessor, Barack Obama. And what Trump calls an unprecedented boom is, by many measures, not all that different from the solid economy he inherited from Obama.

Trump highlighted the new trade agreements he has negotiated, including his phase-one deal with China and the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement he signed last month.

The main suspense in Trump’s speech was over whether he would address the charges against him.