President Trump’s 2019 State of the Union address was that kind of speech.
If you have not seen it, you should watch it online. Reading it will only convey 10 percent of its power. It was the interaction of the president with the members of Congress and the audience in the galleries that was so compelling.
The emotions of Tuesday night matched anything President Reagan achieved in his addresses to Congress. From the early mentions of people in the gallery – which were guaranteed to get even the Democrats to stand and applaud – to spontaneously singing "Happy Birthday" to a Holocaust and 2018 synagogue shooting survivor to chanting “USA! USA!,” the total performance and interaction with the members of Congress was vastly more powerful than the words on paper.
Furthermore, the delivery was presidential. The president interacted with the Democrats in a positive and cheerful way, which bodes well for bipartisan legislative initiatives for the rest of this year. By one count, the president was interrupted 98 times with applause. Both the left-wing Democrats and the never Trump Republicans found themselves standing and applauding again and again.
As a former Speaker of the House who had to stand and applaud President Bill Clinton when he said, “The era of big government is over,” I knew exactly what was going on in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s mind. She had to sit and be pleasant while her major opponent got her own party to repeatedly stand with enthusiastic applause. She had to listen politely to the person she spends every day attacking. The vice president is always a happy and a solid cheerleader. When I was Speaker, Al Gore would sit next to me and enthusiastically applaud everything President Clinton said. Last night, Mike Pence was cheerfully standing and applauding as often as possible. Having the opposition party’s top cheerleader sit next to you just makes the Speaker’s job harder.
Speaker Pelosi at times could not help herself. She would conspicuously pick up the speech text and read it to find out how much longer she had to remain disciplined and pretend to be a good hostess (the president is the guest of the House). When even her most radical new members began standing and applauding, she must have experienced a bit of despair.
I knew the speech would become historic when, even before it ended, I saw a tweet from Jerry Falwell Jr. proclaiming, “Best State of the Union speech in my lifetime delivered by the best @POTUS since George Washington and it’s not even over yet! God bless @realDonaldTrump!”
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https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/newt-gingrich-president-trumps-state-of-the-union-changed-history
Loved his speech and loved watching the witch, twitch.
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