Trump's State of the Union Theme: Democrats, Please Don't Hurt Me

The president plans to use his address to plead for bipartisanship in an era of deep division and bitterness largely engineered by Trump himself.

Asawin Suebsaeng
02.04.19 5:12 AM ET

After the protracted shutdown standoff between Donald Trump’s GOP and Democratic lawmakers threatened to derail the president’s second State of the Union address, Trump is headed into Tuesday’s high-profile speech armed with a simple plea to Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and other Democrats on Capitol Hill:

Please. Don’t. Hurt. Me.

On Friday afternoon, a senior Trump administration official briefed reporters on some of the planned contents of the upcoming address, which is set to include themes of “American greatness,” Trump’s standard talk of immigration and violent crime, NAFTA and China-bashing, and “endless foreign wars.”

One element the senior official repeatedly touched on during the background briefing was Trump’s plans to emphasize the virtues of “cooperation and compromise,” and to try to rhetorically dissuade Democrats from giving themselves over to “resistance and retribution.”

The official also read excerpts from a draft of the State of the Union speech, which had Trump speaking against “political stalemate,” and imploring Democratic politicians to help “build new coalitions” and to find “new solutions” across the aisle on several policy fronts, such as prescription drug pricing and infrastructure spending.

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