Trump to make the case for an improved economy in State of Union

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will try to strike a bipartisan and optimistic tone, but remind the nation of his economic accomplishments when he delivers his first State of the Union speech to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday.

The president’s speech comes as the nation remains deeply divided over his leadership and partisan ideology on domestic issues like health care and immigration.

Trump plans to try to bridge that division, a senior administration official said, with the speech and the theme of “building a safe, strong, and proud America.”

The president, at a White House event on Monday, said “it’s a big speech — an important speech.”

“We worked on it hard,” he said. “Covered a lot of territory, including our great success with the markets and the tax cuts.”

“People will be reminded” how much the president has accomplished, the administration official said. “The economic upswing is helping everybody, from the lowest to the highest income groups.”

But the first year of the Trump presidency has been marked by controversy and divisive events that have kept his approval rating the lowest of any recent president since Woodrow Wilson, according to Gallup.

And an investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election being conducted by special counsel Robert Mueller has been a distraction for the White House.

Immigration plan

Trump unveiled an immigration plan last week that drew opposition from liberals and conservatives, alike. The plan calls for a path to citizenship for 1.8 million undocumented immigrants, in exchange for $25 billion for a border wall system and slashing legal immigration in half.

Democratic senators and House Republicans immediately declared the proposal dead-on-arrival. A bipartisan group of lawmakers is instead crafting a proposal in the Senate.

Trump also has ended temporary protective status for immigrants fleeing countries because of civil strife and natural disasters.

One of those immigrants, Nery Martinez of Las Vegas, will be in the gallery as the guest of Rep. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev.

Martinez is a bar apprentice at Caesars Palace Hotel and Casino. He fled El Salvador in 1990 because of the civil war and has lived in Las Vegas since. He and his wife have temporary protective status (TPS) and two children, who are U.S. citizens.

Rosen said the president “needs to be reminded” that his actions to end TPS will have “very real consequences, destroying countless families.”

There are roughly 6,300 people in Nevada from El Salvador, Honduras and Haiti, according to the left-leaning Center for American Progress.

Another TPS holder from El Salvador, Flor de Maria Campos of Las Vegas, also has been invited to attend the speech by Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, D-Nev.

Campos and her husband, Jose, own restaurants in Las Vegas. She came to Nevada in 2000. They have two children.

To illustrate his point on immigration and the need for tightened enforcement, Trump has invited Evelyn Rodriguez, whose 16-year-old daughter was beaten and stabbed to death by MS-13 gang members in Brentwood, N.Y.

On Monday, Trump said that for many years Congress has talked about immigration but “never got anything done. We’re going to get something done.”

Other topics

Trump is expected to strike a unifying tone in his comments to lawmakers. He will lay out his $1 trillion infrastructure plan to rebuild roads and bridges in states and cities nationwide.

The president will also speak about deregulation, and the tax cut plan that was passed through Congress without support of Democrats.

Both deregulation and tax cuts have been credited with fueling an economic boom and creating investor confidence in the stock market that has seen record gains in the past year.

The president will also touch on trade, and insisting on fair and reciprocal trade, the senior administration official said.

He’ll also call for rebuilding the military and improving national security, the senior administration official said.

But the speech comes as Congress has failed to negotiate and pass a budget for fiscal year 2017, which began Oct. 1, and faces a Feb. 8 deadline to iron-out differences and lift spending caps or pass another stopgap bill to keep the government open.

Differences over spending priorities and immigration forced a government shutdown earlier this month, and lawmakers have just days to reach agreement before another shutdown threatens to furlough federal workers and close agencies again.

Democrats have selected Rep. Joe Kennedy, D-Mass., to deliver their response.

Contact Gary Martin at gmartin@reviewjournal.com or 202-662-7390. Follow @garymartindc on Twitter.