By
Hans Izaak Kriek*
President Donald Trump drew a clear line between his party’s policies and the creeping socialism some see on the left, declaring at the State of the Union “America will never be a socialist country” as many nonplussed Democrats appeared to shift uncomfortably in their seats.
The House Speaker Nancy Pelosi sat stone-faced behind the president as he said: “America is founded on liberty and independence and not government coercion, domination and control”.
He said to Republicans applause and prolonged chant USA, USA: “We are born free and we will stay free.” Democrats largely remained seated as Republicans resumed the ‘USA’ chant and applauded several seconds. Still, Democrats did find enough common ground to applaud many of Trump’s remarks.
Some commentators said, it was the best speech ever. Trump renewed his call for a wall on the southern U.S. border, but without repeating his threats in recent weeks to declare an emergency, striking a less-rigid tone in his first address to a divided Congress.
The President called for both parties to ‘work together, compromises and reach a deal’ to pass a spending bill including funding for the project, but he suggested some flexibility on how long and what it would look like. “This is a smart, strategic, see-through steel barrier – not just a simple concrete wall,” Trump said: “It will be deployed in the areas identified by border agents as having the greatest need. If Congress fails to act, I will get it built.”
Donald Trump began the portion of his 82-minute speech by citing the economic decline and civil disorder in Venezuela as a cautionary tale, after his administration last week imposed sweeping sanctions against the regime of Nicolas Maduro.
The country's government in recent years limited citizens' access to foreign currency, implemented substantial subsidies and price controls on food and other items, and fell victim to sweeping corruption -- before effectively collapsing last month.
"Two weeks ago, the United States officially recognised the legitimate government of Venezuela, and its new interim president, Juan Guaido," Trump said. "We stand with the Venezuelan people in their noble quest for freedom -- and we condemn the brutality of the Maduro regime, whose Socialist policies have turned that nation from being the wealthiest in South America into a state of abject poverty and despair.
President Trump announced the meeting with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un during a two-day summit in Vietnam in late February. “We continue our historic push for peace on the Korean peninsula,” he said, adding he believed war would have broken out between the U.S. and North Korea had he not been elected.
The high-profile meeting on February 27 and 28 would be the second one between the president and North Korea's authoritarian ruler. The two leaders met during a landmark summit in Singapore in June 2018 and agreed to flesh out details of an agreement to start the denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula — a long-sought and elusive foreign policy goal of American administrations since the 1950s.
Mr. Trump has also pointed to North Korea's lack of missile tests since his June meeting with the North Korean leader as evidence of the success of his strategy, but North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho told the United Nations General Assembly in October there was "no way" North Korea would get rid of its nuclear arsenal because it could not trust Washington.
Last week, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats testified that North Korea was unlikely to ever denuclearise.
We’ll see what the results will be after the meeting in Vietnam.
Proudly was the announcement about NATO. “We’re also getting other nations to pay their fair share, for years, the United States was being treated very unfairly by NATO, but now we have secured a $ 100 billion dollar increase in defense spending from NATO allies. The Republicans chant – USA, USA and applaud long.
Also, when the President said: “In just over two years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom, a boom that has rarely been see before. We have created 5.3 million new jobs and importantly added 600,000 new manufacturing jobs, something which almost everyone said was impossible to do, but is, we are just getting started,” Trump said in his speech.
And then the Democrats. The female House Democrats include House Speaker Nancy Pelosi organise ‘white out’ during the State of the Union. Congressional Democrats received a lot of criticism on social media for their refusal to stand or applaud during various parts of President Trump’s State of the Union.
A friend, a professor and doctor sent me the following text: “Dressed in white frocks and looking like the doleful and worried Mexican peasants in the Magnificent Seven, they scowled, jeered and showed hatred for our way of life and our successes as a nation. I have never seen so many sour pusses collected in the great House of the People in my life.”
On the other side of this story, President Trump invited some of the most amazing guests ever presented in the Congress. Combat Veterans of WWII and a holocaust survivor saved by one of those US soldiers and victims of illegal alien capital crimes and former inmates now pardoned, it was an amazing and very emotional scene.
And the Americans liked it, the polls gave the President up to 76% approval of his speech. Nobody can remember a State of the Union address that had so much immediate impact on the viewers. When Donald Trump proclaimed, we will Never Be A Socialist Nation, he brought the House down.... The democrat socialists were ready to crawl under their seats in their white "peasant" costumes.”
*International political commentator for European Business Review and editor-in-chief of Kriek Media
By: N. Peter Kramer
