There are indications that President Trump’s State of the Union address will sound like a milquetoast Beto O’Rourke speech. If that’s the case, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., should rescind her invitation again.
Reports ahead of the speech say Trump will emphasize “bipartisanship.” White House adviser Kellyanne Conway told reporters Monday that Trump will be “calling for comity,” and then she helpfully spelled out the word, “C-O-M-I-T-Y.”
There’s not a single person who opposes some vague concept of bipartisanship or general agreeability. Everyone also supports curing cancer. But none of this by itself is going to fix the porous southern border or the sham of an asylum law that’s currently allowing any foreigner to land on American soil and receive immediate legal protection to stay. In any event, what we really mean when we say ‘bipartisanship’ is that we want the other side to cave to our side. That would certainly be unifying!
What viewers of the address need is a national sense of urgency: an explanation of the ongoing problems created by untold numbers of immigrants overwhelming the border and our resources, an immediate solution to the issue, and a way to make it happen today rather than tomorrow.
Trump has to make a massive sale to the public. They have to trust him to fix the immigration crisis. And though he’s turned out to be a woefully inept negotiator with crispy hair, God was kind enough to give him superior gifts in salesmanship.
People remember when Trump mocked Rosie O’Donnell at the debate during the Republican primaries in 2015, but what he said immediately after the quip was far more crucial to that moment of his campaign and it was critical in getting him elected to the White House.
“I’ve been challenged by so many people and I don’t frankly have time for total political correctness,” he said. “And to be honest with you, this country doesn’t have time, either. This country is in big trouble, we don’t win anymore. We lose to china, we lose to Mexico, both in trade and at the border. We lose to everybody.”
This is called creating a sense of urgency, a key sales tactic (“Don’t delay, act now!”) and Trump has done it over and over again to tremendous effect, without regard to who might take exception. He seemed to intuit that enough Americans were on his side, and if they weren’t, they would eventually get there.
He was often right. In December 2015, he proposed a “total and complete” shutdown of foreign Muslims entering the U.S., insisting, “We have no choice.”
An astounding 62 percent of independent voters supported the ban, a proposal no other Republican or Democrat would have dared to even think about.
Trump has already given a dignified speech on immigration and how he wants to work with Democrats to secure the border and build a wall. It made no change.
If we want to hear more stale appeals to “freedom,” “better futures,” and being “more united,” we can re-read Howard Schultz’s USA Today op-ed. The State of the Union address is Trump’s opportunity to show some fire and inspire some energy for the country to act.
We’re running out of time.
