SOTU: "Americans Are Dreamers Too"

President Trump issued calls for bipartisan action from Congress on infrastructure and immigration in his first State of the Union address Tuesday night, an 80-minute address that was the third-longest ever in which he also touted economic progress and claimed other accomplishments.

He was optimistic about the nation and its future, declaring that the State of the Union is strong, quote, "because our people are strong," and saying there is what he called a "new American moment" of possibility. However, he also gave warnings of threats to Americans, focusing on violence from illegal immigrants, particularly members of the MS-13 street gang, when he talked about immigration, and said his first priority has to be the American people.

Among the guests sitting with First Lady Melania Trump in the House gallery who the president recognized from the podium were the parents of two young people who were killed by MS-13 members and a law enforcement agent who arrested more than 100 gang members.

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Trump first cited achievements from his first year, including the massive tax cut and overhaul, getting rid of the individual mandate from Obamacare, cutting large number of regulations, getting judges appointed, and the decision to withdraw from the Asia-Pacific trade pact, saying of trade moves, "The era of economic surrender is totally over."


Trump urged members of both parties to work together on infrastructure, calling for $1.5 trillion in new spending and partnerships with states and the private sector. He also called for bipartisanship on an immigration plan, offering what he described as a compromise in which the Dreamers brought to the U.S. illegally as children would be given a path to citizenship in exchange for funding for a border wall, as well as the major changes to the legal immigration system of ending the visa lottery intended to encourage immigration diversity and restricting the ability of immigrants to bring family members to the U.S. to just spouses and minor children. Presenting it as a way to protect Americans, Trump reclaimed the "Dreamers" term to say: "Americans are dreamers too."

On foreign policy, Trump warned about the threat from North Korea, saying the U.S. was using a campaign of "maximum pressure" to prevent a nuclear threat to the U.S. from the North. He recognized the family of Otto Warmbier in the gallery with the first lady, the young American who was captured during a brief visit to North Korea and returned more than a year later in a vegetative state, before he died days later.

Trump also said he'd signed an executive order directing that the Guantanamo Bay prison be kept open, a reversal from former President Barack Obama, who's tried, unsuccessfully, to close it. Additionally, responding to some nations who receive U.S. aid voting at the U.N. to rebuke his decision last month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, Trump called on Congress to pass a law ensuring that U.S. foreign aid only goes to, quote, "America's friends."