What do ratings for State of the Union address mean for Trump? – Idaho State Journal

Bad news for the president. Preliminary figures show the TV audience for the State of the Union (SotU) address Tuesday was down about 25% from 2019. What was lost to many was not what he said. Rather, it was how he said it.

Historically, a SotU speech has been boring. Previous presidents often had cabinet secretaries write sections of it. Thus it gave the country a look at what such diverse departments such as Defense, Commerce, Agriculture, Education, etc. thought had changed over the previous 12 months.

The Tuesday address created no such record. Rather it was a very well crafted campaign rally, complete with giveaways to critical constituencies and compelling personal emotional stories.

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Giving Rush Limbaugh the Presidential Medal of Freedom is an example. Limbaugh has been a very successful radio shock jock, saying, among other politically incorrect and highly objectionable things about people of color, progressives and activist women, Theres a dog in the White House, while displaying a photo of President Bill Clintons 13-year-old daughter. But Limbaughs a human being, too, and sadly hes stricken with lung cancer. He made that grim announcement on Monday.

Limbaugh pretended to be surprised by the presentation, though he indicated in previous interviews that he knew it was coming. Ironically, Juan Guaido, the socialist claiming to be the legitimate president of Venezuela in a fight with its de-facto dictator, Nicolas Maduro, was also acknowledged.

There were other contrived scenarios that created a feel-good story just made for the television audience. Unlike the Congress assembled, after all, viewers can wander off to the fridge, the toilet or another channel if not sufficiently engaged by the presentation.

The president said things that were true, that were partly true, and that were blatantly false. He claimed credit for parental leave for women. That the bipartisan bill, which Congress passed in December, applies only to federal employees and increases the national debt by roughly $660 million a year, wasnt mentioned.

The president boasted of what he claimed were his successes. He turned the economy around and is determined to protect health insurance, he said. That the economy was growing faster under the previous administration and has, sadly, slowed since? That was ignored.

That his administration is currently in court seeking to destroy insurance coverage for pre-existing medical conditions? That ideological attack on the signature accomplishment of the Obama administration wasnt mentioned either.

The president claimed he has led the U.S. to be No. 1 in world oil and gas production. Actually, we became top in natural gas in 2009 and oil in 2013. The president then was Barack Obama.

Sadly, in my view, the president also resorted to again repeating the lie that immigrants are criminals. A number of studies show they commit crimes here at far lower rates than native-born Americans.

The giveaways? For the so-called pro-lifers he offered anti-abortion legislation. For evangelicals it was tax dollars for religious schools. That there are legal and constitutional problems with those promises was unmentioned. Perhaps thats because such mention wouldnt fit with the fictional, made for television, narrative the reality TV star was crafting.

That narrative was that hes the hero in the white hat who rides in to save us poor regular people from the pure evil that is his opposition. It will be well accepted by the significant minority of Americans who are his base.

Its sad that so much of what he said was either a bit of a stretch, greatly exaggerated, or just downright false, or, as he would tell us, Fake news! In the television business ratings are everything. That they dropped off so sharply Tuesday evening has to be a serious concern for the president. He won in 2016 even though 3 million more Americans voted for his opponent than for him.

The ratings drop may mean, of course, that his backers are so strongly on his side that they dont need to hear from him to know theyll vote for him. Given his weak popular vote support, though, and narrow support in certain critical states, he still must rely on swing voters to win again. If those folks contributed to the low ratings Tuesday, the presidents campaign could be in trouble.

The president has every right to craft the narrative he chooses. We citizens also have every right to regard that tale skeptically.

Dave Finkelnburg is a longtime Idahoan, a former newspaper journalist and is currently semi-retired from an engineering career.

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What do ratings for State of the Union address mean for Trump? - Idaho State Journal