CNN
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President Donald Trump’s speech on Tuesday night’s Congressional joint session serves as an extension and explanation of the rapid change that he unleashed in just 44 days of his new term.
He faces his biggest audience, but he pushes to turn his agenda into law as he has a narrow majority of Republicans in Congress.
Republicans gather largely around the president, but there have been early rifts in party unification regarding some of the administration’s actions to cut Trump’s recent rhetoric on government service and Ukraine. Late Monday, Trump suspended military aid to Ukraine. This has already sparked concerns in several corners of the GOP, despite many Republicans praising the oval office showdown with Ukrainian President Voldimir Zelensky last week.
Trump’s speech also occurs on the same day as 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada have been enacted, causing a market volatile morning amidst the fear of the world trade war and alarm among several Red State senators about the impact on the nation.
Trump has noted the skepticism and criticism he faces from many Republican lawmakers over the emerging trade war, and White House Susie Wills and other top advisors have been called “all-day,” an official from a senior administration told CNN.
The president is opposed to criticism, aides say. But to deviate from the fierce criticism of tariffs, Trump plans to shed light on his speech about a series of executive orders he signed on a cultural issue that is widely popular with Trump base.
“Overview,” a senior administrator told CNN, “Our Republicans will applaud all night.”
On Monday evening, the White House announced that “Updating America’s Dreams” was the theme of the speech.
“Tomorrow night will be bigger,” Trump wrote on social media on Monday. “I say it as if it were.”
What should we see here during Trump’s first speech to Congress in his new administration:
After becoming a Republican for the first time in 20 years to win the popularity poll, Trump faces pressure to fulfill his campaign promises, including lowering prices.
His party has full control of Congress, but given how quickly the political winds in Washington can change, Trump’s advisers have speeded up their priorities in pushing forward his agenda targeting the two-year window before the 2026 mid-term elections.
Trump himself learned lessons from his first semester – he doesn’t wait for the perfect moment to carry out his promises. Instead, he signs executive orders almost every day, sometimes only in a few minutes to sign.
One Trump adviser said the goal of the president’s speech was to connect the gusts of his early movements to the life of the average American. Trump will address his plan to lower prices, although certain outlines of his speech were still gathering on Monday.
Since his second appointment, Trump has overseen the dramatic reshaping of the federal government, many of which are in the efficiency of the government and in Elon Musk’s hands.
The world’s wealthiest man who appeared as one of Trump’s most visible and influential advisers, told CNN, is in the House room for a speech and is put up as a major example of the rapid action of the administration that will change Washington.
The entire institution that had previously sent priorities to the White House to include in speeches has been struck by the new Trump era. Tens of thousands of federal workers have lost their jobs.
Not all Republicans are on board. Some lawmakers were hit by component phone calls and voters at City Hall, angry at the federal government’s dramatic cuts.
The president’s speech comes amid disagreement among House and Senate Republicans about how to establish a budget aimed at reducing spending, protecting Social Security, and making permanent signing tax cuts from Trump’s first term.
He is poised to rally Republicans behind his agenda, the advisor said without providing specific guidance on how to achieve that.
Speaker Mike Johnson, sitting behind Trump’s left shoulder, proves more than willing to deal with the president’s whim.
“There’s no sunlight between House Republicans and Senate Republicans,” Johnson told CNN. “We all have the exact same ideas and mission: to provide America’s first agenda.”
Trump’s speech focuses on his domestic agenda, officials told CNN, with Trump previewing his core policy proposals for the next four years.
Still, one of the main areas of interest is how the president will use the world stage to deal with wars overseas, particularly between Russia and Ukraine, and how he will strive for Ukraine after suspending aid.
Trump has abandoned decades of American foreign policy orthodoxy and is moving forward to pursue new deals with countries like Russia, while other allies like Ukraine remain as collateral damage. Foreign ambassadors customarily attending the address are rushing to explain the changes in the capital.
Biden administration officials had taken Olena Zelenska, the wife of the Ukrainian president, to Washington as a guest on her 2024 Union Speech (she couldn’t make it, she couldn’t cite the scheduling dispute). Trump’s speech comes four days after Trump denounced her husband in an oval office.
Trump said a day before his speech about dealing with the situation in Ukraine.
“Well, I’ll let you know. We’re giving a speech, you probably heard it tomorrow night, so I’ll let you know tomorrow night,” he said on Monday when asked if he thought the mineral trade with Ukraine was dead.
In 2020, Trump’s rival felt encouraged. After his speech that year, Nancy Pelosi, a speaker of that era, was able to see him tear a copy of his speech on camera.
The unanswered question this year is how Democrats respond in the room. Leaders of the party are still rushing to resolve the message and plans on how to present offsets with Trump, keeping in mind the Driving Democrats’ Driving in the November election.
The party tapped Michigan freshman Sen. Elissa Slotkin to deliver a formal rebuttal. Slotkin, a former CIA analyst and member of the US home, won Michigan last year as Trump carried the state.
The TV showman, Trump has long relied on a surprise element of his primetime speech to Congress.
The president’s speechwriting team is working on multiple drafts, but Idez said Monday that he has spent little time on the address, except for a few theatrical moments that Trump aims to resonate with the audience in the television and in the room of his house.
Unlike Trump’s first term, top advisor Stephen Miller has not been taken away from the lead when writing this speech, leaving the task to other speechwriters. But he and other Trump’s senior aides will all be involved in the editing heading into Tuesday evening.
Trump is expected to win a victory lap and promote his election victory. He claimed that despite his relatively small margins he gave him the duty to enact a cleaning.
Jeff Zeleny of CNN contributed to this report.
This story has been updated with additional reports.
