Trump to deliver State of the Union address to a divided Congress

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump will deliver his third State of the Union address on Tuesday, promising a “very positive” speech amid calls from his Republican allies on Capitol Hill to avoid discussing the issue of his impeachment before a fiercely divided Congress.

Trump will deliver the speech in the U.S. House of Representatives chamber where House Democrats voted to impeach him in December. Standing before some of the very lawmakers who have prosecuted the case for his removal, he will outline his legislative vision for the year, while laying the groundwork for a second-term agenda as he seeks reelection in November.

The high-stakes speech comes a day before the Republican majority Senate is expected to acquit him on the two articles of impeachment handed down by the House for abuse of power and obstruction of justice stemming from efforts to solicit a foreign investigation into his Democratic political rivals.

White House aides have remained tight-lipped about how much, if any, of Trump’s speech will focus on defending himself against the impeachment charges. Tuesday’s address will mark only the second time an impeached president delivers a State of the Union address. The first, Democrat Bill Clinton, avoided the issue altogether in his 1999 address, instead focusing his 77-minute speech on his domestic agenda.

Trump’s aides have said his address will be “optimistic” in tone, focusing on “blue collar” issues such as the economy, the increasing cost of health care and increasing school-choice programs for grade-school students.

“I think it will be generally in [the] spirit that this is not a time for pessimism, this is a time for optimism,” said a senior administration official in a briefing with reporters at the White House last week.

Trump, speaking to reporters on Sunday after a morning spent tweeting broadsides at Democratic presidential candidate Mike Bloomberg, said he was “really looking to giving a very, very positive message.”

Senate Republicans on Monday urged Trump to focus on mapping out his legislative priorities for the upcoming year and avoid discussing the impeachment trial before Wednesday’s consequential Senate vote.

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), one of Trump’s staunchest allies in Congress, told reporters that “it’d be smart not to” talk about impeachment.

“If most people are ready to move on from impeachment, I hope he is too,” Graham said.

Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) told reporters Monday: "If I were him, I'd avoid that subject.”

“I think there's plenty to talk about and it's an opportunity to move on,” Blunt said. “But the other option is to address it head on and he often has a head-on kind of guy.”

Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-Ala.) said he’d advise Trump against mentioning his impeachment because “the American people want to have bipartisanship.”

“There's been an opportunity cost with all these deliberations," Cassidy said. “We've not got stuff done that we could get done.”

Whether Trump heeds the call of Republican lawmakers is up in the air, but unlike the freewheeling discourses that he gives at his campaign rallies, he has largely stuck to his scripted remarks during his previous three speeches before a joint session of Congress.

Meena Bose, executive dean of Hofstra University’s Peter S. Kalikow School of Government, Public Policy and International Affairs, said that “if President Trump's previous State of the Union addresses are a model, it will be a fairly clear straightforward presentation of the White House's legislative agenda for the coming year.”

Bose, a presidential studies scholar, said given the air of formality that usually surrounds the State of the Union, “it would be surprising for [Trump’s] address to turn into a Twitter type speech or presentation.”

Jennifer Mercieca, a historian of American political rhetoric at Texas A&M University, said “the stakes for President Trump's State of the Union are incredibly high” because “no other president in American history has given the speech while impeached and running for reelection.”

While the speech has been months in the making, the senior administration official noted the possibility for last-minute changes, telling reporters: “No speech is ever final until it's delivered.”