With 251 days remaining until voters decide whether to let his party keep control of Congress, President Donald Trump used the prime-time stage afforded to him by his annual State of the Union address to dole out surprise medals and repeat familiar boasts of a new American “golden age” — all while mocking the affordability concerns that have caused his approval ratings to plummet in recent months.
Opening what became the longest-ever address to Congress by a president by claiming that the country is “bigger, better, richer and stronger than ever before” after his first year back in the White House, Trump bragged of having achieved “a transformation like no one has ever seen before and a turnaround for the ages” as he claimed to have solved all of the problems that led voters to return him to power.
