White House press secretary Josh Earnest denied that President Obama wrote his final State of the Union speech as a direct response to Donald Trump’s emergence as the GOP presidential nominee front-runner.
Asked whether he would have delivered a different address if Trump weren’t the leading candidate, Earnest said the president has consistently tried to strike optimistic themes throughout his two presidential campaigns and time in office.
Political observers, he said, “can draw a pretty straight line” from Obama’s 2004 convention speech, to his Iowa caucuses victory speech, to his two inaugural addresses and his final State of the Union address.
“In each of those high profile addresses, the president offered up a fundamental optimistic vision for the country. And he delivered those addresses, at least a couple of those addresses, at times when people had reason not to be feeling particularly optimistic,” Earnest told reporters Wednesday, noting the 2009 inaugural took place in the midst of the financial crisis.
“The vast majority of those speeches were delivered before several of the current Republican candidates for president walked across the national political stage. Not just Mr. Trump, but even people like Sen. Cruz and Sen. Rubio,” he said.
Reporters pressed Earnest about the widespread perception that the speech was responding to Trump’s rise and his negative comments about illegal immigrants and proposal to put a halt to Muslims entering the United States.
“It’s hard not to see the stark contrast in approach,” Earnest conceded. “I would readily acknowledge that. I think that was pretty obvious even to people who are only sort of paying attention to politics.”
He also praised some aspects of South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s State of the Union GOP response.
“At the White House we took note of it for the same reasons that you did,” he said. “She was willing to do something that a lot of other Republicans, leading Republicans, have been unwilling to do, which is to actually articulate a commitment to some core American values that some leading Republican presidential candidates are speaking out against. Or at least speaking in a way that contradicts those values.”
“Her willingness to stand up and speak out against that took some courage, and it was rather conspicuous given the willingness of a lot of other leading Republicans to either ignore it or to try to sweep it under the rug,” he added.
