President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address was his best chance to capture a national audience and sell Americans on the strength of his administration’s accomplishments so far.
But those accomplishments that Trump did highlight were largely lost in a sea of boasting about America’s might and prestige, and his heavy-handed and often very graphic attempts to pull on viewers’ heartstrings with shoutouts to guests including the mother of a woman slain on a bus in Charlotte, North Carolina, the victorious U.S. men’s Olympic hockey team, and members of the U.S. military to whom he gave out Medals of Honor on the spot.
