Trump strikes conciliatory tone in State of the Union

By Michael Hernandez

WASHINGTON (AA) – U.S. President Donald Trump urged bipartisan cooperation in his annual address before the American people while continuing to insist on the need for some of his most controversial policy goals.

The tone Trump struck Tuesday night is at odds with much of what has defined his first two years in office and indeed in his Twitter activity just hours before he took to the Capitol.

Standing before a House chamber packed with federal lawmakers, however, Trump said he was not laying out a Republican or Democrat agenda, but the agenda of the American people.

"We must step boldly and bravely into the next chapter of this great American adventure, and we must create a new standard of living for the 21st century," Trump proclaimed. "Together, we can break decades of political stalemate. We can bridge old divisions, heal old wounds, build new coalitions, forge new solutions, and unlock the extraordinary promise of America’s future. The decision is ours to make."

But just moments later, he continued to insist on the need to build a barrier on the Mexican border, a controversial demand that has uniformly fallen on deaf ears within the Democratic Party and has at best lukewarm support among some Republicans.

"In the past, most of the people in this room voted for a wall -- but the proper wall never got built. I will get it built," he said. "Where walls go up, illegal crossings go way, way down."

Lawmakers have just 10 days remaining to pass a spending bill to fund many government agencies that were given a three-week funding allowance following the longest shutdown in U.S. history. Trump is continuing to demand whatever spending bill clears the federal legislature has roughly $5.7 billion in appropriations for his wall.

Should it not, Trump has threatened to shut the government down again or declare an national emergency to build the wall -- a recourse that would be challenged in court by Democrats and landowners whose property the president would need to appropriate to build the separation barrier.

He further said the U.S. has a "moral duty" to develop an immigration system "that protects the lives and jobs of our citizens" after two years of clamping down on both legal and illegal forms of immigration, including the implementation of policies that have separated migrant children from their parents.