Reviews of President Trump’s first address to Congress on Tuesday night seem to be converging around a single theme: It was Trump at his most subdued. “Trump Softens Tone in Outlining Goals,” read the lead headline on The New York Times homepage Wednesday morning. The Washington Post commented on Trump’s “milder tone”; The Wall Street Journal said the address “turned from the ominous language” of his campaign speeches; Politico went with “Trump tries on normal.”
And they’re right. In tone and style, Trump’s speech was relatively normal, at least judging it against his earlier efforts. He opened his address by condemning recent threats against Jewish community centers and the shooting last week of two Indian immigrants in Kansas City, something he had been criticized for not doing earlier. He called for unity and cross-party cooperation, and stayed away from attacks on the press or his political opponents. Apart from a few banal ad-libs, he largely stuck to his script.
But beneath the gentler tone, Trump’s speech — a State of the Union address in all but name — was quietly radical. He called for a complete overhaul of U.S. policy on taxes, trade, immigration and health care. He proposed spending billions more on defense and as much as $1 trillion on infrastructure. And he promised a new version of his controversial — and currently stalled — travel ban on visitors from seven majority Muslim countries.
Trump’s speech included few policy details and only one genuine surprise: a call to return to a system that accepts or rejects immigrants based on their skills and education. Most of his other proposals were either standard Republican orthodoxy or were familiar from Trump’s campaign. But proposals don’t have to be new to be dramatic. The policies Trump laid out Tuesday night would change the country and its global relationship in profound ways.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/trumps-speech-was-quiet-and-quietly-radical/