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In an address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, President Trump denounced Biden-era policies, mocked Democrats and lauded his administration’s early hailstorm of executive actions. He was, he said, “just getting started.”
What struck Tali Jackont, an educator, more than anything was Trump’s showmanship. The president, she said, showed off his magnetism – his ability, like it or not, to combine forcefulness with bristling digs. She also enjoyed his humor.
“Listen, he understands the media, he understands TV,” she said. “He tried to say things here and there to break the seriousness of the speech,” she added, noting that there were a few times when she found herself laughing out loud.
The entire speech, she added, “was very impressive”
An immigrant from Israel and longtime Democrat, Ms. Jackont changed political course in November, voting for Trump, hoping that he could help Israel achieve peace, while reducing crime and getting her adopted country moving in a better direction.
One thing that surprised Ms. Jackont: the time Trump took to acknowledge cabinet members and speak compassionately about guests in the audience, like Devarjaye Daniel, a 13-year-old known as D.J., who was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2018, and was invited to the speech.
“It showed a little bit of warmth of personality when he spoke about people,” she said, adding that, “It doesn’t mean that he cannot behave the opposite and kick someone off like Zelensky. But it was very nice to see a lot of empathy. It was very nice to see.”
Isaiah Thompson, a college student, was expecting a finely tuned performance from Mr. Trump in his speech to Congress. After all, he said, the president has had a long career in entertainment.
What he was not expecting was the congressional response.
On the Republican side, you had people standing, waving and chanting, “U.S.A.,” and on the Democrat side, you had people sitting in silence and holding signs that said “Musk steals.”
That one room showed how divided the country is. That divide worries me.
Mr. Thompson said he was fine with the president listing his accomplishments in the first six weeks of his second term, much of it an echo of the promises made in his inauguration speech in January. He acknowledged that the volume of Trump’s actions is impressive, but remained troubled by the pace.
The address, he said, was intentionally provocative, with Mr. Trump taking unnecessary swipes at Democrats.
This was supposed to be a speech about how he was making America great again, but he was throwing out insults.
He was particularly bothered by Mr. Trump’s use of tariffs as a bargaining tool and his description of certain programs — involving Africa, immigration or L.G.B.T.Q. communities — as a flagrant waste of taxpayer dollars.
“It feels like those programs were targeted by DOGE, when there are plenty of other programs that could be cut,” he said, referring to Elon Musk’s effort to cut back the federal government.
Darlene Alfieri, a longtime Democrat, was disappointed by the Democratic Party’s response to the speech.
“In my opinion, as a Democrat, that was a Republican Party win,” she said.
Perry Hunter, a high school teacher, was also put off by the Democrats’ behavior during the speech.
If they can’t get past their partisanship for these things, it just reinforces that the Democrat Party is not for regular Americans.
The speech was Trump showmanship at its best, full of typical political bluster, which appears to be how Trump gets things done.
He’s constantly working angles.
Mr. Hunter isn’t sure what to make of the tariffs just yet, but he said Trump has two years, until the midterm elections, to make them work for the American economy.
While he personally would tolerate rising prices in the short term if that led to them dropping in the long term, he expects other Americans to “want everything now, immediately.”
You have to have patience, and I’m not sure how patient we are.
Jaime Escobar Jr., the mayor of a small town on the Texas border, was impressed by Trump’s message on immigration.
It only took a few minutes, but for Jaime Escobar Jr., the disruption of Mr. Trump’s speech by Representative Al Green, Democrat of Texas, was another reminder of the nation’s political divide.
It is expected, yet a little sad, Mr. Escobar said, adding, When a president speaks, regardless of the political party, I think there should be a sort of decorum.
Mr. Escobar paid particular attention to Mr. Trump’s message on immigration. Roma, population 11,000, struggled with a migrant crisis under the Biden administration. Seeing his hometown overloaded by the daily arrivals led him, once a loyal Democrat, to vote for Mr. Trump. He was not alone. Starr County, home to Roma, also flipped for Mr. Trump.
Illegal crossings have gone down significantly – and it didn’t take so much an act of Congress, but an executive order and a different type of leadership. Trump is accomplishing what many of the people who voted for him were hoping he would accomplish.
But not everything in Mr. Trump’s speech left him brimming with optimism.
In fact, he went to bed worried about how the tariff wars between the U.S. and its trading partners would affect the local economy of Roma, which has close commercial ties with Mexico.
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