Donald Trump Makes His Case to a Joint Session of Congress

President Donald Trump is set to address a joint session of Congress tomorrow night at 9 p.m. E.S.T. The speech is his opportunity to make the case to the American public for the policies he has enacted in the first six weeks of his presidency as well as to outline what he intends to do in the months to come. 

The White House has done little to preview what precisely Trump will say to Congress. It is a given that he will claim credit for what he sees as his political successes so far. But whether he will focus his remarks on what he plans to do under his own authority versus what legislation he wants Congress to pass remains unknown.  

There is certainly much Trump could say on the latter score. The U.S. government faces a partial shutdown on March 14 if Congress fails to pass a budget. Congressional Republicans also remain split over how to implement his top two legislative priorities, securing the southern border and making permanent the tax cuts enacted during his first presidency.  

Foreign policy experts will be listening to what Trump says—or doesn’t say—about the rest of the world. There is no shortage of topics he could discuss. Tariffs against Canada and Mexico, the United States’ two largest trading partners, are set to go into effect tomorrow. (Trump could, of course, postpone those tariffs at the last moment, as he did last month.) Military and intelligence support for Ukraine may end in the wake of last Friday’s acrimonious White House meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The contours of U.S. policy toward China remain fuzzy. Talk of retaking the Panama Canal, acquiring Greenland, and leaning into the Monroe Doctrine has died down over the past month but might resurface. 

Whatever theme Trump chooses for his speech, he will be speaking to a divided nation. Gallup, which has been asking Americans to assess presidential performance since Dwight Eisenhower sat in the Oval Office, placed Trump’s approval rating when he took office in January at 47 percent. That makes him “the only elected president with sub-50% initial approval ratings.”  

Gallup’s polling also shows that the public is skeptical about what Trump has done thus far. On six major issues, a majority of Americans say they disapprove of the job he is doing.  

Trump’s speech is unlikely to change these assessments. For all the talk of a presidential bully pulpit, presidential speeches seldom move public opinion.  

Although Trump’s speech has the look and feel of a State of the Union address, it is not being billed as such. That is in keeping with the tradition Ronald Reagan started in 1981. Unlike his predecessors, Reagan called his first speech to a joint session of Congress an “Address Before a Joint Session of Congress on the Program for Economic Recovery.” Every president since has followed suit, though they have given their speeches different titles. Trump called the 2017 speech he gave a month after taking office a “Joint Address to Congress.” 

If the past is prologue, Trump will talk for a long time. His 2017 joint address was his shortest one, running a shade over one hour. His joint addresses after that all ran between one hour and eighteen minutes and one hour and twenty-two minutes. 

As is customary, Democrats will offer a rejoinder to Trump’s speech. They have tapped first-term Michigan Senator Elissa Slotkin, who took office in January, for the honor. House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries says that Slotkin will seek to “communicate that Democrats are fighting to lower the cost of living and protect Social Security and Medicaid while Republicans cut taxes for their billionaire donors and Elon Musk.” Slotkin can expect to speak to a much smaller audience than Trump did. Democrats will also be seeking to shine a spotlight on the Trump administration’s efforts to slash the federal workforce by inviting fired workers to attend the speech as their guests.  

One quick prediction: Whatever Trump says, Republicans will praise the speech and Democrats will pan it. 

Oscar Berry assisted in the preparation of this post.