SOTU

On January 30th of this year President Trump gave the State of the Union speech, during that speech he made the claim that the state of the union was strong. I don’t necessarily agree, however it is clear that he can be Presidential, and state of the union was executed better than expected. I remember the hysteria. The state of the union was a good speech by Trump; in fact it caught many of us off guard. It could have been that he was reading off a teleprompter, however I do not feel that it was for that reason, it seemed that the points he was making were topics right up his wheelhouse, as well the people that he choose to be there really emphasized his message. There is no doubt that his base, or core supporters thought he knocked this speech out of the park. The biggest take away from this State of the Union is that he hyper focused on domestic issues rather than foreign. He did mention certain foreign issues but it was outweigh by the domestic.

The economy in his first year is good, however I did noticed that he really emphasized the stock market as a sign of success within his administration, which is a bad political move. There are two reasons, the first being that the stock market is not the best indicator of the United States economy. Second, that if it goes down would he take the blame for it? It would just be remarkable if he would take the credit for it while it is going good but when it goes bad he wouldn't. What comes up must come down, and just a couple of days after he made this speech the Dow jones dropped 4%.

This administration will be increasing its nuclear arsenal; this is not shocking at all since the North Korean problem keeps growing. It seems that this increase is a direct response to this growing problem. There is no doubt that the North Koreans will be increasing theirs too. The international community is definitely listening, and the speech was heard; now we will be building for the possibility to blow up the world 100x over. I noticed that he did not really go to much in depth on this topic either, which is good for him politically but bad for us, this is because it seems the policy is reactive and not thought out.

The biggest positive foreign policy achievement was his message on ISIS, the receding territory was a major accomplishment, almost 100% of the territory that ISIS had is not under their control anymore, and is a great thing. I will be anxious to see if during this year if they still have territory because I foresee that they will go back to more Al-Qaeda type approach of guerilla tactics. To be honest I’m surprised that he didn’t talk about it more because that was one of his promises on the campaign trail. 

The domestic parts of the speech really hit home the perception of him being Presidential, the foreign policy elements seemed mediocre at best. It was in opinion, a dropped ball moment, since he really talked about bombing the shit out of ISIS and didn’t capitalize on it politically. Not to mention that dropping bombs on anyone is really a non-partisan issue and he could've gotten better approval ratings. Not to mention, he provide no solution to the ISIS problem after they are pushed out of the region, If I remember correctly it was a power vacuum that created ISIS, getting rid of them might poise a new problem. This is a planning problem, I do not see them having any strategic plan for when they get rid of ISIS, just another aspect of his speech that did not seem really seem well thought out, even though it was one of his campaign promises and he could of greatly capitalized from it.    

The international community probably received very mixed messages, which isn’t unlike Trump to do, however I do see that other nations will probably take him more seriously since the speech was overall good, and well received. It is kind of shocking that he didn’t mess up; all in all, he really didn’t shoot himself in the foot which is what he does most of the time.